This slap at the professors delighted the young man’s friends.  He amused them and made himself their idol by dint of alternate flattery and blame.  His smile went from one to the other, while, by the aid of a few drops of beer spilt on the table, his long nimble fingers began tracing complicated sketches.  His art evidently came very easily to him; it seemed as if he could do anything with a turn of the hand.

‘And Gagniere?’ asked Mahoudeau; ‘haven’t you seen him?’

‘No; I have been here for the last hour.’

Just then Jory, who had remained silent, nudged Sandoz, and directed his attention to a girl seated with a gentleman at a table at the back of the room.  There were only two other customers present, two sergeants, who were playing cards.  The girl was almost a child, one of those young Parisian hussies who are as lank as ever at eighteen.  She suggested a frizzy poodle—­with the shower of fair little locks that fell over her dainty little nose, and her large smiling mouth, set between rosy cheeks.  She was turning over the leaves of an illustrated paper, while the gentleman accompanying her gravely sipped a glass of Madeira; but every other minute she darted gay glances from over the newspaper towards the band of artists.

‘Pretty, isn’t she?’ whispered Jory.  ’Who is she staring at?  Why, she’s looking at me.’

But Fagerolles suddenly broke in:  ’I say, no nonsense.  Don’t imagine that I have been here for the last hour merely waiting for you.’

The others laughed; and lowering his voice he told them about the girl, who was named Irma Becot.  She was the daughter of a grocer in the Rue Montorgueil, and had been to school in the neighbourhood till she was sixteen, writing her exercises between two bags of lentils, and finishing off her education on her father’s doorstep, lolling about on the pavement, amidst the jostling of the throng, and learning all about life from the everlasting tittle-tattle of the cooks, who retailed all the scandal of the neighbourhood while waiting for five sous’ worth of Gruyere cheese to be served them.  Her mother having died, her father himself had begun to lead rather a gay life, in such wise that the whole of the grocery stores—­tea, coffee, dried vegetables, and jars and drawers of sweetstuff—­were gradually devoured.  Irma was still going to school, when, one day, the place was sold up.  Her father died of a fit of apoplexy, and Irma sought refuge with a poor aunt, who gave her more kicks than halfpence, with the result that she ended by running away, and taking her flight through all the dancing-places of Montmartre and Batignolles.

Claude listened to the story with his usual air of contempt for women.  Suddenly, however, as the gentleman rose and went out after whispering in her ear, Irma Becot, after watching him disappear, bounded from her seat with the impulsiveness of a school girl, in order to join Fagerolles, beside whom she made herself quite at home, giving him a smacking kiss, and drinking out of his glass.  And she smiled at the others in a very engaging manner, for she was partial to artists, and regretted that they were generally so miserably poor.  As Jory was smoking, she took his cigarette out of his mouth and set it in her own, but without pausing in her chatter, which suggested that of a saucy magpie.