“What is your name, young man?” he asked; and on receiving his reply, he turned the page reserved for the R’s and wrote down hastily, “Randall, J.—landscape.” “Now,” he went on, “do what I tell you! Go home and paint up that foreground more carefully. Even _I_ could not get my associates to vote for it as it stands. I will see to the rest—don’t worry! You can count on me!” Randall, light-hearted once more, expressed his thanks profusely for these highly comforting assurances, and was on the point of departing when the Master abruptly demanded, “Why didn’t you go to the Pere Rousseau, instead of coming to me? He is your teacher now, not I!” “I did go to him.” admitted Randall, blushing deeply, “and he said my work wasn’t half bad, and⸺” “But did you ask him to speak a good word for you to the jury?” inquired the Master maliciously. “Yes,” nodded Randall, smiling but blushing still more deeply. “I felt that so many of the professors protected their pupils that it was only fair that I should receive the same treatment.” “Well! what then?” demanded the Master, ill-concealing an irrepressible tendency to laugh. “He became very angry and ordered me out of his place,” responded Joe. “He said that any man who was not strong enough to get into the Salon on his own merit, _ought_ to be thrown out.” The Master was rolling over and over on his divan in a most indecorous way, holding his plump hands on his plump sides, in an explosion of merriment. Then, suddenly realizing how undignified his behavior must appear, he recovered his composure with a jerk, and remarked thoughtfully, with just a tinge of pity in his voice, “The Pere Rousseau—the dear old man—always acts like that when he is requested to protect anyone! He is a sort of modern Don Quixote and can’t understand how matters are arranged to-day. If it weren’t for me—his best friend—he wouldn’t see the work of many of his pupils in the Salon; and let me add, young man, that it is a mighty good thing for you that you could say just now you were a pupil of _his_ and not of some of the other so-called artists I could name to you if I chose.” The Master’s eyebrows became ominously contracted again, and he only deigned to snap out a ferocious “_Bon jour!_” to the departing Randall, omitting the more cordial “_mon ami_” of the first salutation.