“The next forenoon two or three friends came to aid Joseph in transporting his statue to the Louvre. The wagon arrived four hours too late. Nor was this all. At this point, fatality intervened in the person of an absurd _concièrge_, who declared that he would let nothing leave Joseph’s room before the back rent was paid. The artists explained to the _concièrge_ that a statue was not a piece of furniture, and that the law did not permit him to hold it back. He would not listen to reason, and, stony in his stubbornness, demanded a written permit from the landlord. They hurried to Passy, where the landlord lived, and did not find him. He would not be in before dinner. They returned at the dinner hour. He had just gone out. It was already eight o’clock in the evening. They decided to apply to a justice of the peace. The justice turned them over to the commissary of police, who began by sustaining the _concièrge_, but who decided, on Joseph’s representations of the injury that would be done him if he were made to miss the _Salon_, to authorise the removal of the statue. It was then eleven o’clock. They had barely an hour to get to the Louvre. A dangerous coating of thin ice rendered the streets impracticable. Vehicles could only advance at a walk. The artists needed three hours at least, and they had only one. Furthermore, repairs which were being made on the sewers forced them to take the longest route. In crossing the Pont-Neuf, Joseph and his friends heard it strike the half-hour.
“‘It’s half-past eleven,’ said Joseph, who was sweating great drops in spite of the fact that the thermometer marked a north-pole temperature.
“‘It’s half-past twelve,’ volunteered a young man who detached himself from a band of painters who were returning with their pictures because they had arrived at the Louvre too late. They were making the best of it, and were singing gaily, ‘_Allons-nous-en, gens de la noce! etc._’
“Joseph and his friends retraced their steps.
“A little later Joseph exposed his Saint Antoine and a statuette of Marguerite at the _Exposition du Bazar Bonne Nouvelle_ (corresponding to the modern _Salon des Réfusés_), and sold the two to the Museum of Compiègne for 150 francs.