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Rufin, alarmed at the loss the party had experienced, drew his men back under shelter of some trees, till he could decide on what was best to be done.
"Ah, well," said Rufin, "I shall come across him somehow." He saluted her perfunctorily and was about to turn away, but the avidity of her face reminded him that he had a standard to live up to. He produced another five-franc piece and was pursued to the gate by the stridency of her gratitude.
"March!" he said, and they took the condemned man toward the door. He twisted his head round for a last glance at the room. "Good-bye, little one!" he cried loudly. The kneeling girl only moaned. "Good-bye, M'sieur Rufin." Rufin stepped forward and bowed mechanically. "Adieu, Maitre," he answered.
The old cunning face on the pillow resisted the charm of his manner, the gentleness of his appeal. "Not his?" demanded Papa Musard. "Not in the room underneath? Not one of the daubs of that assassin, that cut-throat, that Italian?" Rufin nodded, as though confirming a pleasant surprise. "Is it not strange," he said, "how genius will roost on any perch?
She did not understand why she had been brought to this room, and stared with hard, preoccupied eyes at the tall man with the mild, still face. "I recognized you by a picture I saw some months ago in a room in Montmartre," said Rufin. "It was a great picture, the work of a great man." "Ah!" The girl let her breath go in a long sigh. "Monsieur knows him, then? And knows that he is a great man?
The great shoulders, the huge arms, all the compressed strength of the body, made the effect of some strong animal fettered and compelled to tameness. "Rufin?" he said hesitatingly. The painter nodded. "Yes, it is Rufin." The girl glided past him toward the seated man. "And I, Pietro," she said. He made a gesture with his hand as though to move her aside, for she stood between him and Rufin.
"We artists are all alike. Show us a picture and our manners go by the board. With you, Musard, need I say more?" "You have said a lot," grumbled the ancient of days. "Coming in roaring like a bull! What picture has upset you?" "A picture you have not seen," said Rufin, "or you would be grasping my hand and weeping for joy you who know pictures better than us all!"
"You are not often here, Monsieur Rufin?" he suggested. "And yet, as you see, here is much matter for an artist. These faces, eh? All the brigands of Paris are here to-day. In there" and he pointed to one of the many doors "the trial is proceeding of those apaches." "A great occasion, no doubt," said Rufin. He looked casually towards the door which his companion indicated.
"There is no need," he said, as Rufin groped in his pockets for the permit with which he had been provided. "I have been warned to expect Monsieur Rufin and the lady, and I congratulate myself on the honor of receiving them." "He knows we are coming?" asked Rufin. "Yes, he knows," replied the other. "At this moment his toilet is being made."
The business preserved its character of a series of accidents to the end; accidents are the forced effects of truth. Rufin, having organized supports of a kind not to be ignored in a republican state, even by blind Justice herself, threw his case at the wise grey head of the Minister of Justice a wily politician who knew the uses of advertisement.
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