“Ah!” said the Count, with a look half of envy and half of incredulity, “you must love a woman very much to make such sacrifices for her sake.”
“What sacrifices?” asked Mistigris.
“Don’t you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted by so great a master is covered with gold in payment?” replied the Count. “Why, if the Civil List pays you thirty thousand francs for those of the two rooms in the Louvre,” he went on, turning to Schinner, “you would certainly charge a humble individual, a bourgeois, as you call us in your studios, twenty thousand for a ceiling, while an unknown decorator would hardly get two thousand francs.”
“The money loss is not the worst of it,” replied Mistigris. “You must consider that it will be a masterpiece, and that he must not sign it for fear of compromising her.”
“Ah! I would gladly restore all my orders to the sovereigns of Europe to be loved as a young man must be, to be moved to such devotion!” cried Monsieur de Sérizy.
“Ay, there you are,” said Mistigris. “A man who is young is beloved of many women; and, as the saying goes, there is safety in grumblers.”
“And what does Madame Schinner say to it?” asked the Count, “for you married for love the charming Adélaïde de Rouville, the niece of old Admiral Kergarouët, who got you the work at the Louvre, I believe, through the interest of his nephew the Comte de Fontaine.”
“Is a painter ever a married man when he is traveling?” asked Mistigris.
“That, then, is Studio morality?” exclaimed the Count in an idiotic way.
“Is the morality of the Courts where you got your Orders any better?” said Schinner, who had recovered his presence of mind, which had deserted him for a moment when he heard that the Count was so well informed as to the commission given to the real Schinner.
“I never asked for one,” replied the Count. “I flatter myself that they were all honestly earned.”
“And it becomes you like a pig in dress-boots,” said Mistigris.
Monsieur de Sérizy would not betray himself; he put on an air of stupid good-nature as he looked out over the valley of Groslay, into which they diverged where the roads fork, taking the road to Saint-Brice, and leaving that to Chantilly on their right.
“Ay, take that!” said Oscar between his teeth.
“And is Rome as fine as it is said to be?” Georges asked of the painter.
“Rome is fine only to those who love it; you must have a passion for it to be happy there; but, as a town, I prefer Venice, though I was near being assassinated there.”
“My word! But for me,” said Mistigris, “your goose would have been cooked! It was that rascal Lord Byron who played you that trick. That devil of an Englishman was as mad as a hatter!”
“Hold your tongue,” said Schinner. “I won’t have anything known of my affair with Lord Byron.”
“But you must confess,” said Mistigris, “that you were very glad that I had learned to ‘box’ in our French fashion?”
Now and again Pierrotin and the Count exchanged significant glances, which would have disturbed men a little more worldly-wise than these five fellow-travelers.
“Lords and pashas, and ceilings worth thirty thousand francs! Bless me!” cried the l’Isle-Adam carrier, “I have crowned heads on board today. What handsome tips I shall get!”
“To say nothing of the places being paid for,” said Mistigris slyly.
“It comes in the nick of time,” Pierrotin went on. “For, you know, my fine new coach, Père Léger, for which I paid two thousand francs on account—well, those swindling coach-builders, to whom I am to pay two thousand five hundred francs tomorrow, would not take fifteen hundred francs down and a bill for a thousand at two months.—The vultures insist on it all in ready money. Fancy being as hard as that on a man who has traveled this road for eight years, the father of a family, and putting him in danger of losing everything, money and coach both, for lack of a wretched sum of a thousand francs!—Gee up, Bichette.—They would not dare do it to one of the big companies, I lay a wager.”
“Bless me! No thong, no crupper!” said the student.
“You have only eight hundred francs to seek,” replied the Count, understanding that this speech addressed to the farmer was a sort of bill drawn on himself.
“That’s true,” said Pierrotin. “Come up, Rougeot!”
“You must have seen some fine-painted ceilings at Venice,” said the Count, speaking to Schinner.
“I was too desperately in love to pay any attention to what at the time seemed to me mere trifles,” replied Schinner. “And yet I might have been cured of love-affairs; for in the Venetian States themselves, in Dalmatia, I had just had a sharp lesson.”
“Can you tell the tale?” asked Georges. “I know Dalmatia.”
“Well, then, if you have been there, you know, of course, that up in that corner of the Adriatic they are all old pirates, outlaws, and corsairs retired from business, when they have escaped hanging, all—”
“Uscoques, in short,” said Georges.
On hearing this, the right name, the Count, whom Napoleon had sent into the provinces of Illyria, looked sharply round, so much was he astonished.
“It was in the town where the Maraschino is made,” said Schinner, seeming to try to remember a name.
“Zara,” said Georges. “Yes, I have been there; it is on the coast.”
“You have hit it,” said the painter. “I went there to see the country, for I have a passion for landscape. Twenty times have I made up my mind to try landscape painting, which no one understands, in my opinion, but Mistigris, who will one of these days be a Hobbema, Ruysdael, Claude Lorraine,
