her figure. She designs, and has an excellent touch on the
piano. I have a son also--a little fiend--it was he who crept this
minute between my legs--he's an extraordinary clev----"

"There is one thing, sir," replied the big man, "that I can't
comprehend--a thing that amazes me--and that is, that people who live in
the Rue Grenetat should give parties. It is a miserable street--a horrid
street--covered eternally with mud--choked up with cars--a wretched part
of the town, dirty, noisy, pestilential--bah!"

"And yet, sir, for thirty years I have lived here."

"Oh Lord, sir, I should have died thirty times over! When people live in
the Rue Grenetat they should give up society, for you'll grant it is a
regular trap to seduce people into such an abominable street. I"----

M. Lupot gave up smiling and rubbing his hands. He moves off from the
big man in the spectacles, whose conversation had by no means amused
him, and he goes up to a group of young people who seem examining the
Belisarius of Mademoiselle Celanire.

"They're admiring my daughter's drawing," said M. Lupot to himself; "I
must try to overhear what these artists are saying." The young people
certainly made sundry remarks on the performance, plentifully intermixed
with sneers of a very unmistakable kind.

"Can you make out what the head is meant for?"

"Not I. I confess I never saw any thing so ridiculous."

"It's Belisarius, my dear fellow."

"Impossible!--it's the portrait of some grocer, some relation, probably,
of the family--look at the nose--the mouth--"

"It is intolerable folly to put a frame to such a daub."

"They must be immensely silly."

"Why, it isn't half so good as the head of the Wandering Jew at the top
of a penny ballad."

M. Lupot has heard enough. He slips off from the group without a word,
and glides noiselessly to the piano. The young performer who had
sacrificed a great concert to come to his soiree, had sat down to the
instrument and run his fingers over the notes.

"What a spinnet!" he cried--"what a wretched kettle! How can you expect
a man to perform on such a miserable instrument? The thing is
absurd--hear this A--hear this G--it's like a hurdygurdy--not one note
of it in tune!" But the performer stayed at the piano notwithstanding,
and played incessantly, thumping the keys with such tremendous force,
that every minute a chord snapped; when such a thing happened--he burst
into a laugh, and said, "Good! there's another g