'Quand vous arriverez au troisième, monsieur, montez, montez toujours! Vous trouverez un petit escalier tournant, en bois. Ça vous conduira à l'atelier.'
Thus advised by the wife of the concierge, Fenwick crossed the courtyard of an old house in the Rue du Bac, looked up a moment at the sober and distinguished charm of its architecture, at the corniced, many-paned windows, so solidly framed and plentifully lined in white, upon the stone walls, and the high roof, with its lucarne windows just touched with classical decoration; each line and tint contributing to a seemly, restrained whole, as of something much worn by time, yet merely enhanced thereby, something deliberately built, moreover, to stand the years, and abide the judgement of posterity. The house in Saint-Simon's day had belonged to one of those newly ennobled dukes, his contemporaries and would-be brethren, whose monstrous claims to rank with himself and the other real magnificences among the ducs et pairs de France drove him to distraction. It was now let out to a multitude of families, who began downstairs in affluence and ended in the genteel or artistic penury of the garrets. The first floor was occupied by a deputy and ex-minister, one of the leaders of the Centre Gauche—in the garrets it was possible for a rapin to find a bedroom at sixteen francs a month. But it was needful that he should be a seemly rapin, orderly and quietly ambitious, like the house, otherwise he would not have been long suffered within its tranquil and self-respecting walls.
Fenwick climbed and climbed, discovered the little wooden staircase, and still climbed. At the very top he found a long and narrow corridor, along which he groped in darkness. Suddenly, at the end, a door opened, and a figure appeared on the threshold.
'Fenwick!—that you? All right!—no steps! The floor was left au naturel about 1680—but you won't come to grief.'
Fenwick arrived at the open door, and Dick Watson drew him into the large studio beyond. Fenwick looked round him in astonishment. The room was a huge grenier in the roof of the old house, roughly adapted to the purposes of a studio. A large window to the north had been put in, and the walls had been rudely plastered. But all the blasts of heaven seemed still to blow through them, and through the chinks or under the eaves of the roof; while in the middle of the floor a pool of water, the remains of a recent heavy shower, testified to the ease with which the weather could enter if it chose.
'I say'—said Fenwick, pointing to the water—'can you stand this kind of thing?'
Watson shivered.
'Not in this weather. I'm off next week. In the summer it's pleasant enough. Well, it's deuced lucky I caught sight of you at that show yesterday! How are you? I believe it's nearly two years since we met last.'
'I'm all right,' said Fenwick, accepting a shaky seat and a cigarette.
Watson lighted a fresh one for himself, and then with arms akimbo surveyed his visitor.