"My very dear Cartarette!" cried Houdon. "Ah, but it is good again to see you! I so regretted myself not to ascend with our friends to call upon you the evening of our little collation." He sought to dismiss the subject with a run on the invisible piano and the words: "But I was slightly indisposed: without doubt our good comrades informed you that I was slightly indisposed. I am very sensitive, and these communions of high thought are too much for my delicate nerves." His good comrades had told Cartaret that Houdon was very drunk; but Cartaret decided that to continue his quarrel would be an insult to its cause. After all, he reflected, this was Houdon's conception of an apology. Cartaret looked at the composer, who was a walking symbol of good feeding and iron nerves, and replied: "Don't bother to mention it." Houdon seized both of Cartaret's hands and pressed them fondly. "My friend," said Houdon magnanimously, "we shall permit ourselves to say no more about it. What sings your sublime poet, Henri Wadsworth Longchap? 'I shall allow the decomposed past to bury her dead.'--Or do I mistake: was it Whitman, _hein_?" He gestured his way to Cartaret's easel, much as if the air were water and he were swimming there. He praised extravagantly the picture that Cartaret now knew to be bad. Finally he began to potter about the room with a pretense of admiring the place and looking at its other canvases, but all the while conveying the feeling that he was apprising the financial status of its occupant. Cartaret saw him drawing nearer and nearer to the two canvases that, their faces toward the wall, bore the likeness of the Lady of the Rose. "I am just going out," said Cartaret. He hurried to his visitor and took the fellow's arm. "I must take that picture on the easel to the rue St. André des Arts. Will you come along?" Houdon seemed suspicious of this sudden friendliness. He cast a curious glance at the canvases he had been about to examine, but his choice was obviously Hobson's. "Gladly," he flourished. "To my _cher ami_ Fourget, is it? But I know him well. Perhaps my influence may assist you." "Perhaps," said Cartaret. He doubted it, but he hoped that something would assist him. He held the picture, still wet of course, exposed for all the world of the Quarter to see, hurried Houdon past the landing and could have sworn that the composer's eyes lingered at the sacred door. "But it is an infamy," said Houdon, when they had walked as far down the Boul' Miche' as the Musée Cluny--"it is an infamy to sell at once such a superb work to such a little cow of a dealer. Why then?" "Because I must," said Cartaret. Houdon laughed and wagged his head. "No, no," said he; "you deceive others: not Houdon. I know well the disguised prince. Come"--he looked up and down the Boulevard St. Germain before he ventured to cross it--"trust your friend Houdon, my dear Cartarette." "I am quite honest with you."