Then, seeing that nobody said anything, he began to stroll round the studio, looking at the paintings on the walls. Papa Malgras, beneath his thick layer of grease and grime, was really a very cute customer, with taste and scent for good painting. He never wasted his time or lost his way among mere daubers; he went straight, as if from instinct, to individualists, whose talent was contested still, but whose future fame his flaming, drunkard’s nose sniffed from afar. Added to this he was a ferocious hand at bargaining, and displayed all the cunning of a savage in his efforts to secure, for a song, the pictures that he coveted. True, he himself was satisfied with very honest profits, twenty per cent., thirty at the most. He based his calculations on quickly turning over his small capital, never purchasing in the morning without knowing where to dispose of his purchase at night. As a superb liar, moreover, he had no equal. Pausing near the door, before the studies from the nude, painted at the Boutin studio, he contemplated them in silence for a few moments, his eyes glistening the while with the enjoyment of a connoisseur, which his heavy eyelids tried to hide. Assuredly, he thought, there was a great deal of talent and sentiment of life about that big crazy fellow Claude, who wasted his time in painting huge stretches of canvas which no one would buy. The girl’s pretty legs, the admirably painted woman’s trunk, filled the dealer with delight. But there was no sale for that kind of stuff, and he had already made his choice--a tiny sketch, a nook of the country round Plassans, at once delicate and violent--which he pretended not to notice. At last he drew near, and said, in an off-hand way: ‘What’s this? Ah! yes, I know, one of the things you brought back with you from the South. It’s too crude. I still have the two I bought of you.’ And he went on in mellow, long-winded phrases. ‘You’ll perhaps not believe me, Monsieur Lantier, but that sort of thing doesn’t sell at all--not at all. I’ve a set of rooms full of them. I’m always afraid of smashing something when I turn round. I can’t go on like that, honour bright; I shall have to go into liquidation, and I shall end my days in the hospital. You know me, eh? my heart is bigger than my pocket, and there’s nothing I like better than to oblige young men of talent like yourself. Oh, for the matter of that, you’ve got talent, and I keep on telling them so--nay, shouting it to them--but what’s the good? They won’t nibble, they won’t nibble!’ He was trying the emotional dodge; then, with the spirit of a man about to do something rash: ‘Well, it sha’n’t be said that I came in to waste your time. What do you want for that rough sketch?’ Claude, still irritated, was painting nervously. He dryly answered, without even turning his head: ‘Twenty francs.’ ‘Nonsense; twenty francs! you must be mad. You sold me the others ten francs a-piece--and to-day I won’t give a copper more than eight francs.’