I've broken out suddenly
into homicidal delirium, and you're my keeper."

"Unfortunately I should not know either of your princes of darkness at
first sight."

"True--and it might be Dupont, who owes me thirty francs, and swore by
the bones of his aunt (an excellent person, who keeps an estaminet in
the Place St. Sulpice) that he would pay me this week. _Diable_! there
goes the bell again."

"It would perhaps be safest," I suggested, "to let M. or N. ring on till
he is tired of the exercise."

"But conceive the horrid possibility of letting thirty francs ring
themselves out of patience! No, _mon ami_--I will dare the worst that
may happen. Wait here for me--I will answer the door myself,"

Now it should be explained that Mueller's apartments consisted of three
rooms. First, a small outer chamber which he dignified with the title of
Salle d'Attente, but which, as it was mainly furnished with old boots,
umbrellas and walking-sticks, and contained, by way of accommodation for
visitors only a three-legged stool and a door-mat, would have been more
fitly designated as the hall. Between this Salle d'Attente and the den
in which he slept, ate, smoked, and received his friends, lay the
studio--once a stately salon, now a wilderness of litter and
dilapidation. On one side you beheld three windows closely boarded up,
with strips of newspaper pasted over the cracks to exclude every gleam
of day. Overhead yawned a huge, dusty skylight, to make way for which a
fine old painted ceiling had been ruthlessly knocked away. On the walls
were pinned and pasted all sorts of rough sketches and studies in color
and crayon. In one corner lolled a despondent-looking lay-figure in a
moth-eaten Spanish cloak; in another lay a heap of plaster-casts,
gigantic hands and feet, broken-nosed masks of the Apollo, the Laocoon,
the Hercules Farnese, and other foreigners of distinction. Upon the
chimney-piece were displayed a pair of foils, a lute, a skull, an
antique German drinking-mug, and several very modern empty bottles. In
the middle of the room stood two large easels, a divan, a round table,
and three or four chairs; while the floor was thickly strewn with empty
color-tubes, bits of painting-rag, corks, cigar-ends, and all kinds of
miscellaneous litter.

All these things I had observed as I passed in; for this, be it
remembered, was my first visit to Mueller in his own territory.

I heard him go through the studio and close the door behind