er, forty times
over."

So, never suspecting that it was his friend Rodolphe changed into a
Croesus, Marcel again set to work on his "Passage of the Red Sea," which
had been on his easel nearly three years.

Rodolphe, who had not yet spoken, meditating an experiment which he was
about to make on his friend, said to himself, "We shall laugh in a
minute. Won't it be fun?" and he let fall a five-franc piece on the
floor.

Marcel raised his eyes and looked at Rodolphe, who was as grave as an
article in the "Revue des deux Mondes." Then he picked up the piece of
money with a well-satisfied air, and made a courteous salute to it; for,
vagabond artist as he was, he understood the usages of society, and was
very civil to strangers. Knowing, moreover, that Rodolphe had gone out
to look for money, Marcel, seeing that his friend had succeeded in his
operations, contented himself with admiring the result, without
inquiring by what means it had been obtained. Accordingly, he went to
work again without speaking, and finished drowning an Egyptian in the
waves of the Red Sea. As he was terminating this homicide, Rodolphe let
fall another piece, laughing in his sleeve at the face the painter was
going to make.

At the sonorous sound of the metal, Marcel bounded up as if he had
received an electric shock, and cried, "What! Number two!"

A third piece rolled on the floor, then another, then one more; finally
a whole quadrille of five-franc pieces were dancing in the room.

Marcel began to show evident signs of mental alienation; and Rodolphe
laughed like the pit of a Parisian theatre at the first representation
of a very tragical tragedy. Suddenly, and without any warning, he
plunged both hands into his pockets, and the money rushed out in a
supernatural steeple-chase. It was an inundation of Pactolus; it was
Jupiter entering Danae's chamber.

Marcel remained silent, motionless, with a fixed stare; his astonishment
was gradually operating upon him a transformation similar to that which
the untimely curiosity of Lott's wife brought upon her: by the time that
Rodolphe had thrown his last hundred francs on the floor, the painter
was petrified all down one side of his body.

Rodolphe laughed and laughed. Compared with his stormy mirth, the
thunder of an orchestra of sax-horns would have been no more than the
crying of a child at the breast.

Stunned, strangled, stupefied by his emotions, Marcel thought himself in
a dream. To drive