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"
He tapped his domelike forehead. "I am never idle. I carry on here
gigantic combinations. I should have been a lawyer. I can spread nets
that no one sees, and then--pst! I draw the rope and the victim is
in the toils of Anastasius Papadopoulos. _Hast du nicht das bemerkt_,
Saupiquet?"
"_Bien sur_," said Saupiquet again. He seemed perfectly conversant with
the dwarf's polyglot jargon.
"To the temperament of the artist," continued the modest Papadopoulos,
"I join the intellect of the man of affairs and the heart of a young
poet. I am always young; yet as you see me here I am thirty-seven years
of age."
He jumped from his chair and struck an attitude of the Apollo Belvedere.
"I should never have thought that you were of the same age as a bettered
person like myself," said I.
"The secret of youth," he rejoined, sitting down again, "is enthusiasm,
the worship of a woman, and intimate association with cats."
Monsieur Saupiquet received this proposition without a gleam of interest
manifesting itself in his dull blue eyes.


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