Although he boasted of watching the Baron with an intellectual curiosity, he could not restrain a shudder of antipathy each time he met the eyes of the man.
And on this particular morning it was especially disagreeable to him that those eyes had seen him making his unoffending notes, although there was scarcely a shade of gentle condescension--that of a great lord who patronizes a great artist--in the manner in which Hafner addressed him.
"Do not inconvenience yourself for me, dear sir," said he to Dorsenne.
"You work from nature, and you are right.

I see that your next novel will touch upon the ruin of our poor Prince d'Ardea.

Do not be too hard on him, nor on us." The artist could not help coloring at that benign pleasantry.

It was all the more painful to him because it was at once true and untrue.

How should he explain the sort of literary alchemy, thanks to which he was enabled to affirm that he never drew portraits, although not a line of his fifteen volumes was traced without a living model?
He replied, therefore, with a touch of ill-humor: "You are mistaken, my dear Baron.