I should have been a lawyer. I can spread nets
that no one sees, and then--pst! I draw the rope and the victim is
in the toils of Anastasius Papadopoulos. _Hast du nicht das bemerkt_,
Saupiquet?"

"_Bien sur_," said Saupiquet again. He seemed perfectly conversant with
the dwarf's polyglot jargon.

"To the temperament of the artist," continued the modest Papadopoulos,
"I join the intellect of the man of affairs and the heart of a young
poet. I am always young; yet as you see me here I am thirty-seven years
of age."

He jumped from his chair and struck an attitude of the Apollo Belvedere.

"I should never have thought that you were of the same age as a bettered
person like myself," said I.

"The secret of youth," he rejoined, sitting down again, "is enthusiasm,
the worship of a woman, and intimate association with cats."

Monsieur Saupiquet received this proposition without a gleam of interest
manifesting itself in his dull blue eyes. His broken nose gave his face
a singularly unintelligent expression. He poured out another glass of
cognac from the graduated carafe in front of him and sipped it slowly.
Then he gazed at me dully, almost for the first time, and said:

"Madame Brandt owes me fifteen sous."

"And I say that she doesn't!" cried the dwarf fiercely. "I send for him
to discuss matters of the deepest gravity, and he comes talking about
his fifteen sous. I can't get anything out of him, but his fifteen sous.
And the _carissima signora_ doesn't owe it to him. She can't owe it
to him. _Voyons_, Saupiquet, if you don't renounce your miserable
pretensions you will drive me mad, you will make me burst into tears,
you will make me throw you out into the street, and hold you down until
you are run over by a tramcar. You will--you will"--he shook his fist
passionately as he sought for a climactic menace--"you will make me spit
in your eye."

He dashed his fist down on the marble table so that the glasses jingled.
Saupiquet finished his cognac undisturbed.

"I say that Madame Brandt owes me fifteen sous, and until that is paid,
I do no business."

The little man grew white with exasperation, and his upper lip
lifted like an angry cat's, showing his teeth. I shrank from meeting
Saupiquet's eye. Hurriedly, I drew a providential handful of coppers
from my pocket.

"Stop, Herr Professor," said I, eager to prevent the shedding of tears,
blood, or saliva, "I have just remembered. Madame did mention to me an
unaqu