He got out of the chair laboriously, like a sick child
might have done. The audience was over but he noticed my eyes
wandering to the portrait and he said in his measured, breathed-out
tones:
"I owe the pleasure of having this admirable work here to the
gracious attention of Madame de Lastaola, who, knowing my
attachment to the royal person of my Master, has sent it down from
Paris to greet me in this house which has been given up for my
occupation also through her generosity to the Royal Cause.
Unfortunately she, too, is touched by the infection of this
irreverent and unfaithful age. But she is young yet. She is
young."
These last words were pronounced in a strange tone of menace as
though he were supernaturally aware of some suspended disasters.
With his burning eyes he was the image of an Inquisitor with an
unconquerable soul in that frail body. But suddenly he dropped his
eyelids and the conversation finished as characteristically as it
had begun: with a slow, dismissing inclination of the head and an
"Adios, Senor--may God guard you from sin."
CHAPTER III
I must say that for the next three months I threw myself into my
unlawful trade with a sort of desperation, dogged and hopeless,
like a fairly decent fellow who takes deliberately to drink.
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