The same old dog-play was now going on before the cheery fire, Louis scrouging and pushing, Herbert extending his muscles and standing pat--either of them could have held the other clear of the floor at arm's length--Herbert, all his sinews in place, ready for any move of his antagonist; Louis, a Hercules in build, breathing health and strength at every pore.
Suddenly the tussle in the chair ceased and the young painter, wrenching himself loose, sprang to his feet.
"By thunder!" he cried, "I forgot all about it! Have you heard the news? Hats off and dead silence while I tell it! Lemois, stop that confounded racket with your dishes and listen! Let me present you to His Royal Highness, Monsieur Herbert, the Gold Medallist--his second!" and he made a low salaam to the sculptor stretched out in the Florentine. He was never so happy as when extolling Herbert's achievements.
"Oh, I know all about it!" laughed back Lemois. "Le Blanc was here before breakfast the next morning with the _Figaro_. It was your African--am I not right, Monsieur Herbert?--the big black man with the dagger--the one I saw in the clay? Fine!--no dryads, no satyrs nor demons--just the ego of the savage. And why should you not have won the medal?" he added in serious tones that commanded instant attention. "Who among our sculptors--men who make the clay obey them--know the savage as you do? And to think, too, of your being here after your triumph, under the roof of my Marmouset. Do you know that its patron saint is another African explorer--the first man who ever set foot on its western shores--none other than the great Bethencourt himself? He was either from Picardy or Normandy--the record is not clear--and on one of his voyages--this, remember, was in the fifteenth century, the same period in which the stone chimney over your heads was built--he captured and brought home with him some little black dwarfs who became very fashionable. You see them often later on in the prints and paintings of the time, following behind the balloon petticoats and high headdresses of the great ladies. After a time they became a regular article of trade, these marmots, and there is still a street in Paris called 'The Marmouset.' So popular were they that Charles VI is said to have had a ministry composed of five of these little rascals. So, when you first showed me your clay sketch of your African, I said--'Ah! here is the spirit of Bethencourt! This Monsieur Herbert is Norman, not English; he has brought the savage of old to light, the same savage that Bethencourt saw--the savage that lived and fought and died before our cultivated moderns vulgarized him.' That was a glorious thing to do, messieurs, if you will think about it"--and he looked around the circle, his eyes sparkling, his small body alive with enthusiasm.