Monsieur Tillet cut out all that were indicated to him.
"That is the man I was talking to you about," he said, as he laid the portrait of Georges with the rest of the sketches. "It is a wonderful likeness, too, an extraordinary likeness, dashed off at a white heat one morning, after I had been particularly impressed by the charm of his society. He was a man in a thousand, poor devil. A pity that he should have got himself into such a disagreeable scrape later. But he was a fool for running away. He ought to have given himself up and stood his trial."
"Why?"
"Because he would have inevitably been acquitted. You may murder anybody you like in France, if you can show a sentimental motive for the crime; and this business of poor Georges was entirely a sentimental murder. He would have had the press and the public with him. The verdict would have been 'Not Guilty.' The populace would have cheered him as he left the Palais de Justice, the press would have raved about him, and he would have been the rage in Parisian society for a month afterwards."
"But you who knew both the victims; you who had received kindnesses from Maxime de Maucroix—surely you cannot judge that double murder with so much leniency," expostulated Heathcote.
The painter shrugged his shoulders with infinite expression.
"Maxime de Maucroix was a most estimable young man," he said, "but what the devil was he doing in that galley?"
"And now if you will kindly tell me the sum-total of my small purchases, I shall have great pleasure in giving you notes for the amount," said Heathcote, shocked at the Frenchman's cynicism.
Monsieur Tillet handed him his hastily jotted account. The prices he had put upon his sketches were extremely modest, considering the man's egotism.
The amount came in all to less than a thousand francs, but Heathcote insisted upon making the payment fifteen hundred, an insistence which was infinitely gratifying to fallen genius.
"I shall remember, Monsieur, on my death-bed, that there was an Englishman who appreciated my work when my countrymen had forgotten me," he said, with mingled pathos and dignity. "Allow me to put up the sketches for you. I do not think you will ever regret having bought them."
While Eugène Tillet was searching among the litter of papers, wood-blocks, and Bristol-board upon his son's table, in the hope of finding two stray pieces of cardboard within which to guard his sketches, the door was quickly opened, and two girls came into the room. The first was Mathilde Tillet, the second was Heathcote's sister.
