Marcel raised his eyes and looked at Rodolphe, who was as grave as an article in the "Revue des deux Mondes." Then he picked up the piece of money with a well-satisfied air, and made a courteous salute to it; for, vagabond artist as he was, he understood the usages of society, and was very civil to strangers. Knowing, moreover, that Rodolphe had gone out to look for money, Marcel, seeing that his friend had succeeded in his operations, contented himself with admiring the result, without inquiring by what means it had been obtained. Accordingly, he went to work again without speaking, and finished drowning an Egyptian in the waves of the Red Sea. As he was terminating this homicide, Rodolphe let fall another piece, laughing in his sleeve at the face the painter was going to make. At the sonorous sound of the metal, Marcel bounded up as if he had received an electric shock, and cried, "What! Number two!" A third piece rolled on the floor, then another, then one more; finally a whole quadrille of five-franc pieces were dancing in the room. Marcel began to show evident signs of mental alienation; and Rodolphe laughed like the pit of a Parisian theatre at the first representation of a very tragical tragedy. Suddenly, and without any warning, he plunged both hands into his pockets, and the money rushed out in a supernatural steeple-chase. It was an inundation of Pactolus; it was Jupiter entering Danae's chamber. Marcel remained silent, motionless, with a fixed stare; his astonishment was gradually operating upon him a transformation similar to that which the untimely curiosity of Lott's wife brought upon her: by the time that Rodolphe had thrown his last hundred francs on the floor, the painter was petrified all down one side of his body. Rodolphe laughed and laughed. Compared with his stormy mirth, the thunder of an orchestra of sax-horns would have been no more than the crying of a child at the breast. Stunned, strangled, stupefied by his emotions, Marcel thought himself in a dream. To drive away the nightmare, he bit his finger till he brought blood, and almost made himself scream with pain. He then perceived that, though trampling upon money, he was perfectly awake. Like a personage in a tragedy, he ejaculated: "Can I believe my eyes?" and then seizing Rodolphe's hand, he added, "Explain to me this mystery." "Did I explain it 'twould be one no more." "Come, now!" "This gold is the fruit of the sweat of my brow," said Rodolphe, picking up the money and arranging it on the table. He then went a few steps and looked respectfully at the five hundred francs ranged in heaps, thinking to himself, "Now then, my dreams will be realized!" "There cannot be much less than six thousand francs there," thought Marcel to himself, as he regarded the silver which trembled on the table. "I've an idea! I shall ask Rodolphe to buy my 'Passage of the Red Sea.'"