"Excuse me, Monsieur; I only know you by your back. Had you shown me that side of you I might perhaps have recognized--" "I have not come here to listen to jokes, Monsieur; and I should have come sooner to demand an explanation, but that it was only this morning I heard of what I consider a deplorable abuse of your talents. But picture-shows are not in my line. I did not see myself there. My friend Flamaran had to tell me that I was to be seen at the last Salon, together with my daughter, sitting on a tree-trunk in the forest of Saint-Germain. Is it true, Monsieur, that you drew me sitting on a trunk?" "Quite true." "That's a trifle too rustic for a man who does not go outside of Paris three times a year. And my daughter you drew in profile--a good likeness, I believe." "It was as like as I could make it." "Then you confess that you drew both my daughter and myself?" "Yes, I do, Monsieur." "It may not be so easy for you to explain by what right you did so; I await your explanation, Monsieur." "I might very well give you no explanation whatever," replied Lampron, who was beginning to lose patience. "I might also reply that I no more needed to ask your permission to sketch you than to ask that of the beeches, oaks, elms, and willows. I might tell you that you formed part of the landscape, that every artist who sketches a bit of underwood has the right to stick a figure in--" "A figure, Monsieur! do you call me a figure?" "A gentleman, I mean. Artists call it figure. Well, I might give you this reason, which is quite good enough for you, but it is not the real one. I prefer to tell you frankly what passed. You have a very beautiful daughter, Monsieur." M. Charnot made his customary bow. "One of my friends is in love with her. He is shy, and dares not tell his love. We met you by chance in the wood, and I was seized with the idea of making a sketch of Mademoiselle Jeanne, so like that she could not mistake it, and then exhibiting it with the certainty of her seeing it and guessing its meaning. I trusted she would recall to her mind, not myself, for my youth is past, but a young friend of mine who is of the age and build of a lover. If this was a crime, Monsieur, I am ready to take the blame for it upon myself, for I alone committed it." "It certainly was criminal, Monsieur; criminal in you, at any rate--you who are a man of weight, respected for your talent and your character-- to aid and abet in a frivolous love-affair." "It was the deepest and most honorable sentiment, Monsieur." "A blaze of straw!" "Nothing of the sort!" "Don't tell me! Your friend's a mere boy."