Every day I passed there in going between the room where I lodge and my business. It was an old shop, full of trash, ambitious of being a bric-à-brac establishment, but its contents had neither beauty nor pedigree to recommend them, only age and cheapness. Its doorsill lay even with the pavement, inviting custom by an easy access, while repelling it by its squalor. The light entered hesitatingly through a cobwebbed window, as if loath to touch the unsightly objects within. Of these, some few had strayed through the door and stood in blinking confusion on the sidewalk--chairs with three legs, desks with no shelves, sofas without seats, clocks eternally silent, and ornaments maimed, cracked, and seamed with glue. It was in this company I first saw him. He had dark eyes with heavy lids, that gave a pathetic look to his face, and one eyebrow was slightly pointed near its termination on the temple, while the other was straight--an irregularity often found in persons of erratic temperament. His nose, sensitive and refined, was in beautiful proportion to the face: his full lips and square chin were partly concealed by a curling brown beard and moustache, and the hair, which met a forehead rather broad than high, was of the same color. Perhaps I should have mentioned that _he_ was a portrait. How had he arrived among his present surroundings, standing on the dirty street, smeared with mud that passing feet cast in his face, splashed by rain, and torn from contact with the edges of chairs or the careless canes of pedestrians--even showing the print of a boot-heel impressed on one cheek? At times he disappeared for days together, as if lost in the maze within: then again I would see his tragic eyes gazing at me through a pelting storm or his skin blistering under a blinding sun. Was it any wonder that I sought to save him from his capricious fate--that I pitied him, that I bought him? I took the opportunity of doing so when the owner of the shop, whom I respectfully christened Sticks, was absent, and was thereby enabled to purchase the portrait from a shock-headed boy in charge for the modest sum of two francs. My acquisition gave me much pleasure, but, unfortunately, it immediately became the subject of an altercation between my two selves. I must here say that my inner and outer self seldom agree, the latter being a practical man and a clerk in a retail lace business, while the former is an idealist who despises the other's employment and ridicules his opinions, frequently bewailing the lot that links him to a clod without aspirations. It was to settle this dispute that I resolved, if possible, to discover some facts about the portrait's history, and for this purpose I stopped at the shop next morning, fortunately finding the shock-headed boy alone. Old Sticks would not have _given_ even an answer, his business being buying and selling. "Where did you get that picture I bought of you yesterday?" I began.