knock at the door, the architect went to open it.

'Hallo, it's Papa Malgras.'

Malgras, the picture-dealer, was a thick-set individual, with
close-cropped, brush-like, white hair, and a red splotchy face. He was
wrapped in a very dirty old green coat, that made him look like an
untidy cabman. In a husky voice, he exclaimed: 'I happened to pass
along the quay, on the other side of the way, and I saw that gentleman
at the window. So I came up.'

Claude's continued silence made him pause. The painter had turned to
his picture again with an impatient gesture. Not that this silence in
any way embarrassed the new comer, who, standing erect on his sturdy
legs and feeling quite at home, carefully examined the new picture
with his bloodshot eyes. Without any ceremony, he passed judgment upon
it in one phrase--half ironic, half affectionate: 'Well, well, there's
a machine.'

Then, seeing that nobody said anything, he began to stroll round the
studio, looking at the paintings on the walls.

Papa Malgras, beneath his thick layer of grease and grime, was really
a very cute customer, with taste and scent for good painting. He never
wasted his time or lost his way among mere daubers; he went straight,
as if from instinct, to individualists, whose talent was contested
still, but whose future fame his flaming, drunkard's nose sniffed from
afar. Added to this he was a ferocious hand at bargaining, and
displayed all the cunning of a savage in his efforts to secure, for a
song, the pictures that he coveted. True, he himself was satisfied