"Well, you know, Chevalier is rottenly bad," replied Roger, without
hesitation.

"It isn't that he is bad," returned Michel indulgently. "But he always
seems to be laughing, and nothing could be worse for a comedy actor. I
knew him when he was quite a kid, at Montmartre. At school his masters
used to ask him: 'Why are you laughing?' He was not laughing; he had no
desire to laugh; he used to get his ears boxed from morning to night.
His parents wanted to put him in a chemical factory. But he had dreams
of the stage, and spent his days on the Butte Montmartre, in the studio
of the painter Montalent. Montalent at that time was working day and
night on his _Death of Saint Louis_, a huge picture which was
commissioned for the cathedral of Carthage. One day, Montalent said to
him----"

"A little less noise!" shouted Pradel.

"Said to him: 'Chevalier, since you have nothing to do, just sit for
Philippe the Bold.' 'With pleasure,' said Chevalier. Montalent told him
to assume the attitude of a man bowed down with grief. More, he stuck
two tears as big as spectacle lenses on his cheeks. He finished his
picture, forwarded it to Carthage, and had half a dozen bottles of
champagne sent up. Three months later he received from Father Cornemuse,
the head of the French Missions in Tunis, a letter informing him that
his painting of the _Death of Saint Louis_, having been submitted to the
Cardinal-Archbishop, had been refused by His Eminence, because of the
unseemly expression on the face of Philippe the Bold who was laughing as
he watched the saintly King, his father, dying on a bed of straw.
Montalent could not make head or tail of it; he was furious, and wanted
to take proceedings against the Cardinal-Archbishop. His painting was