Even in his choice of a dwelling-place he seemed instinctively
to avoid the modern; he had found a studio in the street, the name of
which no one had ever heard before; it was found with difficulty; and
the studio, too, it was hidden behind great crumbling walls, in the
middle of a plot of ground in which some one was growing cabbages.
Octave was always, as he would phrase it, _dans une deche
epouvantable_, but he managed to keep a thoroughbred horse in the
stable at the end of the garden, and this horse was ordered as soon as
the light failed. He would say, "Mes amis et mes amies, je regrette,
mais mon cheval m'attend." And the women liked to see him mount, and
many thought, I am sure, that he looked like a Centaur as he rode
away.
But who was this refined girl? this--a painting tells things that
cannot be translated into words--this olive-skinned girl who might
have sat to Raphael for a Virgin, so different from Octave's usual
women? They were of the Montmartre kin; but this woman might be a
Spanish princess. And remembering that Octave had said he had taken
out the portrait hoping that the Russian who had ordered the Pegasus
might buy it, the thought struck me that she might be the prince's
mistress. His mistress! Oh, what fabulous fortune! What might her
history be? I burned to hear it, and wearied of Octave's seemingly
endless chatter about his method of painting; I had heard all he was
saying many times before, but I listened to it all again, and to
propitiate him I regretted that the picture was not painted in his
present manner, "for there are good things in the picture," I said,
"and the model--you seem to have been lucky with your model.
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