He had timed his visit so as not to interfere with the Master’s morning work, and noticed with a feeling of satisfaction and returning confidence, that the model had gone, and that the Master himself was languidly engaged in cleaning up his palette. The Master, on his part, was evidently used to visits of the kind from other shabbily-dressed young men, for he promptly roared back, “_Bon jour_,” and even added “_mon ami!_” in tones in which it would have been difficult to detect a single friendly note. The unexpectedness of the second part of the greeting served partially to reassure Randall, and enabled him to explain the cause of his intrusion. “I have come,” he began in halting, broken French, “to ask you if you will criticise a picture which I intend to submit to the Salon jury next month? I am not a pupil of yours at present, although I have studied for a short time under you at Julian’s,—before I entered Monsieur Rousseau’s class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where I am now working. I have been told that you are always willing to give advice to young men of your profession, and especially to those who, like myself, have once been members of your school.” The Master, who was a fat, energetic little man of about sixty, glared at the intruder from under a pair of bushy eyebrows, as though he were trying to look him through and through and read if he had any other motive in coming to call upon him; and then, with a movement bordering on brusqueness, whisked the canvas from his trembling hand and placed it on a vacant easel by his side. He intended no unkindness by his action, as Randall soon found out for himself. He was only authoritative, and this was his habitual manner towards friend and foe alike, as well as the secret that underlay his success and power in the artistic world. For power he certainly had; not the kind perhaps that comes from fine achievement or a noble personality, but a sort of brutal, political,—and as he put it, “administrative”—power, which caused him to be courted and feared, and enabled him to make and unmake the reputations of countless of his fellow craftsmen. It was an open secret that he managed the only Salon then in existence practically as he pleased, and put in or put out all those whom he happened at the moment either to like or dislike; that he medalled, or left without recompense, whomsoever he chose; and that on more than one occasion (it must be confessed to his shame) he had even unjustly withheld the official honors from those who were most eminently entitled to receive them.