'To see them! Not at all, Monsieur. Do I wish to look at landscapes for my part? Far from it! Let us admit that you do not come here to me to learn landscape. The human figure--the divine human figure in all its sublime grandeur--there, Monsieur, is the goal of the highest art; there is the arena of the highest artist.' M. Seguin brought his hand carelessly down upon the fragment of ribbon on his own left breast as he finished this final sentence, as though to imply with due delicacy of feeling that he considered the highest artist and Jean Baptiste Seguin as practically convertible expressions. Hiram inclined his head a little, partly to hide a smile. 'I'm afraid, Monsieur,' he said humbly, 'I have nothing to show you in the way of figure painting.' 'Well, well,' Seguin answered with a polite expansion of his two hands, 'give yourself the trouble to come here to-morrow morning and prepare to copy a head of mine for the Salon of last year. You have seen it?--no? then this way, Messieurs, '_I will show it to you!'_ The tone of exalted condescension in which he uttered those four words, 'Je vous la montrerai,' was as though he meant to afford them a glorious treat which would render them for ever after perfectly happy. Hiram and Audouin followed the weazened-up little man into another room, where on an easel in the light stood his great Salon painting of Sardanapalus and the Egyptian Princess. As in everything that Seguin has painted, there was undoubtedly a certain meretricious beauty and force about it. The technique, indeed, was in its way absolutely perfect. The flesh tones had a satiny transparency; the draperies were arranged with exquisite skill and supreme knowledge; the touch was everywhere firm and solid: the art displayed was throughout consummate. Even the figures themselves, viewed as representing their historical namesakes, were not lacking in a certain theatrical grace and dignity. Hiram felt instinctively that Sardanapalus was the masterpiece of a great artist, who had a marvellous hand and a profound knowledge of painting, but no soul in him; and _even_ Audouin recognised at once that though the workmanship was as nearly perfect as the deepest study and the finest eye could possibly make it, yet there was a something still more profoundly artistic that was evidently wanting to the first conception of Seguin's masterpiece.