ell. Then you're going to Versailles,
of course?'

Fenwick replied that he had taken some rooms at the Hotel des
Reservoirs and must make some sketches in the palace; also in the
park, and the Trianon garden. Then he rose abruptly.

'Well, and what have you been after?'

'The same old _machines_,' said Watson, tranquilly, pointing to a
couple of large canvases. 'My subjects are no gayer than they used to
be. Except that--ah, yes--I forgot--I had a return upon myself this
spring--and set to work on some Bacchantes.' He stopped, and picked up
a canvas which was standing with its face to the wall.

It represented a dance of Bacchantes. Fenwick looked at it in silence.
Watson replaced it with a patient sigh. 'Theophile Gautier said
of some other fellow's Bacchantes that they had got drunk on
"philosophical" wine. He might, I fear, have said it of mine. Anyway,
I felt I was not made for Bacchantes--so I fell back on the usual
thing.'

And he showed an 'Execution of a Witch'--filled with gruesome and
poignant detail--excellent in some of its ideas and single figures,
but as a whole crude, horrible, and weak.

'I don't improve,' he said, abruptly, turning away--'but it keeps me
contented--that and my animals. Anatole!--_vaurien_!--_ou es-tu_?'

A small monkey, in a red jacket, who had been sitting unnoticed on
the top of a cabinet since Fenwick's entrance, clattered down to the
floor, and, running to his master, was soon sitting on his shoulder,
staring at Fenwick with a pair of grave, soft eyes. Watson caressed
him;--and then pointed to a wicker cage outside the window in which a
pigeon was pecking at some Indian-corn. The cage door was wide open.
'She comes to feed here by day. In the morning I wake up and hear her
there--the darling! In the evening she spreads her wings, and I watch
her fly toward Saint-Cloud. No doubt the jade keeps a family there.
Oh! some day she'll go--like the rest of them--and I shall miss her
abominably.'

'You seem also to be favoured by mice?' said Fenwick, idly looking at
two traps on the floor beside him.

Watson smiled.

'My _femme de service_ sets those traps every night. She says we are
overrun--the greatest nonsense! As if there wasn't enough for all of
us! Then in the night--I sleep there, you see, behind that screen--I
wake, and hear some little fool squeaking. So I get up, and take the
trap downstairs in the dark--right away down--to the first floor. And
there I let the mouse