ot eyes. Without any ceremony, he passed judgment upon it in one
phrase--half ironic, half affectionate: 'Well, well, there's a machine.'

Then, seeing that nobody said anything, he began to stroll round the
studio, looking at the paintings on the walls.

Papa Malgras, beneath his thick layer of grease and grime, was really
a very cute customer, with taste and scent for good painting. He never
wasted his time or lost his way among mere daubers; he went straight, as
if from instinct, to individualists, whose talent was contested still,
but whose future fame his flaming, drunkard's nose sniffed from afar.
Added to this he was a ferocious hand at bargaining, and displayed
all the cunning of a savage in his efforts to secure, for a song, the
pictures that he coveted. True, he himself was satisfied with very
honest profits, twenty per cent., thirty at the most. He based his
calculations on quickly turning over his small capital, never purchasing
in the morning without knowing where to dispose of his purchase at
night. As a superb liar, moreover, he had no equal.

Pausing near the door, before the studies from the nude, painted at the
Boutin studio, he contemplated them in silence for a few moments, his
eyes glistening the while with the enjoyment of a connoisseur, which his
heavy eyelids tried to hide. Assuredly, he thought, there was a great
deal of talent and sentiment of life about that big crazy fellow Claude,
who wasted his time in painting huge stretches of canvas which no one
would buy. The girl's pretty legs, the admirably painted woman's trunk,
filled the dealer with delight. But there was no sale for that kind of
stuff, and he had already made his choice--a tiny sketch, a nook of the
country round Plassans, at once delicate and violent--which he pretended
not to notice. At last he drew near, and said, in an off-hand way:

'What's this? Ah! yes, I know, one of the things you brought back with
you from the South. It's too crude. I still have the two I bought of
you.'

And he went on in mellow, long-winded phrases. 'You'll perhaps not
believe me, Monsieur Lantier, but that sort of thing doesn't sell at
all--not at all. I've a set of rooms full of them. I'm always afraid of
smashing something when I turn round. I can't go on like that, honour
bright; I shall have to go into liquidation, and I shall end my days in
the hospital. You know me, eh? my heart is bigger than my pocket, and
there's nothing I like better tha