Seraphin tried to produce his false dignity. What he brought out was something genuine.
“I ask it from the heart,” he pleaded. “Do not I, my God, know what it is to be hungry?”
“Hungry?” said the dealer. “Hungry! The boy has an uncle famously rich. What is an uncle for? Hungry? You make une bêtise. Hungry.” He called his clerk and took up his hat. “I will not go,” he vowed. “Hungry, par example!”
“Truly you will not,” smiled Seraphin. “And do not tell him that I sent you: he is proud.”
The sound of the door opening interrupted Cartaret’s dream. He turned, a little sheepish, wholly annoyed. Spectacled Fourget stood there, looking very severe.
“I was passing by,” he explained. “I have not come to purchase anything, but I grow old: I was tired and I climbed your stairs to rest.”
It was too late to hide those portraits. Cartaret could only place for Fourget a chair with its back to them.
“What have you been doing?” asked the dealer.
He swung ’round toward the portraits.
“Don’t look at them!” said Cartaret. “They’re merely sketches.”