The streets were deserted. A thin ray of moonlight, bursting now and then through the heavy clouds, lit up low houses and roughly-cobbled streets and the flights of steps with rare dim lamps bracketed in house walls that led up to the Butte. There was a gendarme in front of the door of the Lapin Agile. The street was still full of groups that had just come out, American officers and Y.M.C.A, women with a sprinkling of the inhabitants of the region. “Now look, we're late,” groaned Heineman in a tearful voice. “Never mind, Heinz,” said Henslowe, “le Guy'll take us to see de Clocheville like he did last time, n'est pas, le Guy?” Then Andrews heard him add, talking to a man he had not seen before, “Come along Aubrey, I'll introduce you later.” They climbed further up the hill. There was a scent of wet gardens in the air, entirely silent except for the clatter of their feet on the cobbles. Heineman was dancing a sort of a jig at the head of the procession. They stopped before a tall cadaverous house and started climbing a rickety wooden stairway. “Talk about inside dope.... I got this from a man who's actually in the room when the Peace Conference meets.” Andrews heard Aubrey's voice with a Chicago burr in the r's behind him in the stairs. “Fine, let's hear it,” said Henslowe. “Did you say the Peace Conference took dope?” shouted Heineman, whose puffing could be heard as he climbed the dark stairs ahead of them. “Shut up, Heinz.” They stumbled over a raised doorstep into a large garret room with a tile floor, where a tall lean man in a monastic-looking dressing gown of some brown material received them. The only candle made all their shadows dance fantastically on the slanting white walls as they moved about. One side of the room had three big windows, with an occasional cracked pane mended with newspaper, stretching from floor to ceiling. In front of them were two couches with rugs piled on them. On the opposite wall was a confused mass of canvases piled one against the other, leaning helter skelter against the slanting wall of the room. “C'est le bon vin, le bon vin, C'est la chanson du vin.” chanted Heineman. Everybody settled themselves on couches. The lanky man in the brown dressing gown brought a table out of the shadow, put some black bottles and heavy glasses on it, and drew up a camp stool for himself. “He lives that way.... They say he never goes out. Stays here and paints, and when friends come in, he feeds them wine and charges them double,” said Henslowe. “That's how he lives.” The lanky man began taking bits of candle out of a drawer of the table and lighting them. Andrews saw that his feet and legs were bare below the frayed edge of the dressing gown. The candle light lit up the men's flushed faces and the crude banana yellows and arsenic greens of the canvases along the walls, against which jars full of paint brushes cast blurred shadows.