ime I washed you off at the pump, and what you said
to the gendarme, and--No, you never remembered anything. You'd
rather sprawl out on the grass, or make eyes at Gretchen or the
landlady--fifty, if she was a day--maybe fifty-five, and yet she fell in
love" (this last was addressed directly to me; it had been reminiscent
before that, fired at the ceiling, at the hangings in his sumptuous
studio, or the fire crackling oil the hearth), "fell in love with that
tramp--a boy of twenty-two,'mind you--Ah! but what a rounder he was!
Such a trim, well-knit figure; so light and nimble on his feet; such a
pair of eyes in his head, leaking tears one minute and flashing hate the
next. And his mouth! I tried, but I couldn't paint it--nobody could--so
I did his profile; one of those curving, seductive mouths you sometimes
see on a man, that quivers when he smiles, the teeth gleaming between
the moist lips."

I had lassoed a chair with my foot by this time, had dragged it nearer
the fire, and had settled myself in another.

"Funny name, though for a German," I remarked carelessly--quite as if
the fellow's patronymic had already formed part of the discussion.

"Had to call him something for short," Marny retorted. "Feudels-Shimmer
was what they called him in Rosengarten--Wilhelm Feudels-Shimmer. I
tried all of it at first, then I bit off the Shimmer, and then the
Wilhelm, and ran him along on Feudels for a while, then it got down to
Fuddles, and at last to Fiddles, and there it stuck. Just fitted him,
too. All he wanted was a bow, and I furnished that--enough of the
devil's resin to set him going--and out would roll jigs, lullabys,
fandangoes, serenades--anything you wanted: anything to which his mood
tempted him."

Marny had settled into his chair now, and had stretched his fat legs
toward the blaze, his middle distance completely filling the space
between the arms. He had pushed himself over many a ledge with this same
pair of legs and on this same rotundity, his hand on his Winchester,
before his first ball crashed through the shoulder of the big elk whose
glass eyes were now looking down upon Fiddles and ourselves--and he
would do it again on another big-horn when the season opened. You
wouldn't have thought so had you dropped in upon us and scanned his
waist measure, but then, of course, you don't know Marny.

Again Marny's eyes rested for a moment on the miniature; then he went
on:

"We were about broke when I painted it,"