Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/118

1O2 I looked at it, laughing and gasping. I repeated some of the sounding phrases. So this artist—well I knew his name at the Mirlitons—this genius of the small red fleck had pursued Wladislaw for miles on foot and in fiacre, had submitted himself and his digestion to an 8o-centime dinner of blatant horse-flesh, had tracked the student to his lodgings, got his style and title from Madame in the rez-de-chaussée and finally written him this letter to ask—to implore, rather, that Wladislaw should be the model for his contemplated picture of the Redeemer! It was really interesting enough; but what struck me as curious was that Dufour of the tulle skirt and tarlatan celebrity—the portraitist of the filles de joie—should conceive it possible to add to his reputation by painting the Man of Sorrows.

It will have been gathered that Wladislaw was poor; just how poor, I think no one among us ever knew. He would sit all the evening long without a fire, and his habit of keeping a large piece of bread in a coat pocket and breaking bits off to nibble during the morning or afternoon's work very naturally gave rise to a legend that he lived upon bread alone.

I, for one, would sooner believe that to have been the case than have credited for a moment the story of the student who claimed to have noticed a heap of fish heads and tails in a corner of his room, the disagreeable residue of a small barrel of raw dried herring which he had kept by him.

I suppose that he paid his classes and boarding charges out of money sent at intervals from home, like any other student; but the final outward evidence of any shortness in cash was the colour