For the next ten minutes nobody spoke; the painter, beside himself, wrestled with his picture, whilst his friends remained anxious at this attack, which they did not know how to allay.  Then, as there came a 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 with very honest profits, twenty per cent., thirty at the most.  He based his calculations on quickly turning over his small capital, never purchasing in the morning without knowing where to dispose of his purchase at night.  As a superb liar, moreover, he had no equal.

Pausing near the door, before the studies from the nude, painted at the Boutin studio, he contemplated them in silence for a few moments, his eyes glistening the while with the enjoyment of a connoisseur, which his heavy eyelids tried to hide.  Assuredly, he thought, there was a great deal of talent and sentiment of life about that big crazy fellow Claude, who wasted his time in painting huge stretches of canvas which no one would buy.  The girl’s pretty legs, the admirably painted woman’s trunk, filled the dealer with delight.  But there was no sale for that kind of stuff, and he had already made his choice—­a tiny sketch, a nook of the country round Plassans, at once delicate and violent—­which he pretended not to notice.  At last he drew near, and said, in an off-hand way: 

’What’s this?  Ah! yes, I know, one of the things you brought back with you from the South.  It’s too crude.  I still have the two I bought of you.’