who had not seen it were to pretend that they had.

"Pig!" she cried full in his face, and swinging high her parasol, broke it over the hat of eight reflections. Carrying the remains of the parasol with her, she stalked, always magnificent, into the street.

Vaguely, Ventrillon removed the ruin from his head, and stared at it, stupefied. The crowd was wild with restrained excitement, but he heard not their whispers, or even their sudden, suppressed little outbursts of highstrung laughter. The portrait was destroyed. The Belletaille hated him. She had made him ridiculous. Tout Paris would reject him. There were now no future commissions on which to count. He was hungry, he had not a sou, and even the hat of eight reflections was a wreck in his hand.

Ventrillon reflected. This was his to-morrow, his to-morrow at Volland's.

SEVENTH REFLECTION

BUT certain fierce and earnest words whispered in his ear with excited persistency began at last to penetrate the vacuum of his deadened brain. Puzzled, he turned to face the speaker.

A thin, blond young man with white eyelashes was begging anxiously:

"I'll give you a hundred francs for that hat! I'll give you two hundred! I 'll give you five hundred-"

Ventrillon blinked. Then his brain cleared, as does the atmosphere with lightning.

"No!" he thundered in a voice which filled the room. "Nom de dieu! No!" And Ventrillon was himself again.

"A chair!" he shouted. "Somebody find me a chair!"

Nobody knew what was going to happen next, but everybody was ready and delighted to do anything which might promote its happening. From somewhere a chair was passed over the heads of the crowd. Ventrillon mounted upon it.

For a moment he paused. The beauty of his young face and the verve of his pose commanded a spontaneous burst of applause; but as he opened his mouth to speak, the noise died quickly into breathless silence.

"Messieurs et 'dames," he cried, "Regard me this hat! There is none other like it. Never has such a thing happened before, and never will it happen again. Here is the unique hat crushed by the umbrella of the great Belletaille, and merely to own it is to render yourself famous. Now attend to this extraordinary fact! I, Odillon Ventrillon, stand here upon this chair, willing to part with this treasure. It is incredible, but, messieurs et 'dames, how much am I bid?"

This turn of affairs was not banal; it was not at all banal. And it was perfectly true that the shapeless hat which Ventrillon was offering was already historic. It was on a par with the shoes of Catharine de' Medici in the Musée de Cluny. The highest bidder would be the envied of tout Paris.

"O Maman," cried the eldest of her three daughters, "bid again! We are so rich, and he is so beautiful!"

"Yes, Maman!" urged the other two, breathlessly. A ripple of amusement spread through the crowd.

"Two thousand, five hundred, and seventy-five," announced that lady with excessive poise, and switched a superior smile over the entire assembly.

But the bidding became general, and little by little the price went up. The hat was now the sensation of Paris; every franc bid increased the sensation; and tout Paris, which lives on sensation, bid on. Then entered the lists a modest little gentleman with a pince-nez, a nouveau riche of the war, who felt himself intruding wherever he went. His timid voice becoming weaker with every increase until at last it was only a whisper, he began persistently overtopping every bid made.

"Four thousand, forty-five," bid the blond youth.

"Four thousand, fifty," bid the gentleman in the pince-nez.

"Four thousand, fifty-five," bid the lady in pearls.

"Four thousand, sixty," bid the gentleman in the pince-nez, almost automatically.

The lady in pearls set her jaw. "Four thousand, sixty-one," she pronounced grimly.

The blond youth mopped his overheated brow and shot his bolt.

"Four thousand, eighty!" and, immediately over-bid by the little gentleman in the pince-nez, rushed frantically from the room. Another bid in a voice without identity.

"Five thousand miserable little francs!" thundered Ventrillon, scornfully. "And the rate of exchange, what it is? Bon dieu! it is an insult to Mademoiselle Belletaille!"

But the sum was already beyond even reason of unreason; it was as if a cold wind had blown into the room. Ventrillon became sensitive to the situation.

"Five thousand, five hundred," suddenly whispered the little gentleman in the pince-nez.

"Five thousand, five hundred," shouted Ventrillon, quickly, "Going, going-" For a moment there was dead silence.

"O Maman," excitedly cried the eldest daughter of the lady in pearls, "is it too late?"

"Chut!" hissed the mother, pinching her daughter's arm until she squealed. "Gone," thundered Ventrillon, with finality-"gone to the dignified monsieur in the pince-nez."

That little man, advanced conspicuously to take possession. The crowd

cheered wildly. Volland made his way in through the uproar.

"Of course, my friend," he said genially, rubbing his hands before the chair of Ventrillon, "you will not forget my commission. A hat is not art, to be sure, but I am accustomed to ten per cent. on sales made in my galleries."

Ventrillon, with an air, peeled off five hundred-franc notes and one fifty from the huge packet the dignified little monsieur with the pince-nez had produced from his pockets, and presented them to Volland.

He who was accustomed to wearing a hat of eight reflections went bareheaded that evening to his garret.

"But," reflected Ventrillon, "one never wears a hat to eat. Politeness forbids." And that night he would dine extravagantly.

212

EIGHTH REFLECTION

At noon the next day Ventrillon woke from the long slumber of the well fed to a nervous knocking at his door.

"Who is there?" he roared angrily.

Ventrillon started in alarm. Perhaps that astonishing woman had come with a gun.

"Tell her I cannot see her."

"But, monsieur, she resembles precisely her photographs in 'Excelsior'—"

"I don't care whose photographs she resembles-" But he stopped short, for he heard the footsteps of the Belletaille herself running up the stairs.

Ventrillon leaped from his bed, and in his bare legs and shirt flung himself against the door.

"Open your door to me!" cried the ecstatic voice of the Belletaille. "Have you seen the morning papers? You cannot refuse me the pleasure of grasping your hand! The name of that Fanny Max does not appear. There was no room for it. She had not even the distinction of being among those present."

"But, mademoiselle," protested Ventrillon, "I cannot see you."

"Tout Paris is wild with the news," the Belletaille rushed on; "even your head-size appears in the papers. It was a clever idea of me to destroy that portrait, was it not? Even as I plunged it into my own likeness, I felt that I plunged my little knife into the heart of that creature. But you have surpassed me. It was a stroke of genius. And what an advertisement for my American tour! I must kiss you on both your cheeks—”

"But, mademoiselle," cried Ventrillon, in agony, "I am not dressed.

"Then open your door a little way. All the world will want to know you now; but can you not come to me this afternoon? We must begin another portrait. Open it only a little way! Permit me to give you the present I have brought you."

Ventrillon allowed her to intrude a large band-box through the gap of the partly opened door. When she had gone, he examined it, gingerly; he wondered if she had handed him an infernal machine. He had heard of such things, and could not trust her honeyed words.

He placed it on his table, and opened it by cautiously cutting away pieces of its sides with his pocket-knife. When all the cardboard had been cut away, there stood upon his table, crown-side down, and filled with scarlet amaryllis, a hat, a magnificent hat, an elegant hat, a formidable hat, a hat which was all there was of chic, a genuine glistening stove-pipe hat, an authentic hat of eight reflections.

Ventrillon stared. It was really true that he was higher in the favor of the Belletaille than ever. He was probably the most talked-of person in Paris. He could that afternoon begin another portrait, and a greater celebrity than he had ever hoped for was within his grasp. There was even

Now the concierge, who, fascinated, had remained behind to peek in at the crack of the door, saw a strange thing. When she reported it eagerly to him that evening, her worthy spouse remarked that now he knew what had become of that bottle of eaude-vie his uncle had sent up from the country, and he was not a man to be taken in by a woman's lies, even when she was sober.

Slinging its contents of scarlet amaryllis about the floor, Ventrillon snatched the hat from the table, placed it accurately in the seat of his chair, and sat upon it.

"It is curious, old fellow," he reflected aloud, without rising from the inchoate mass it had become "it is curious how strange one always feels when one discovers that one has been human. But to-night you and Iyou and I are going together to the Closerie des Lilas. May the francs in my pocket persuade our friends to be merciful!"

So far as the concierge could ascertain, he was addressing a rusty, broadbrimmed black felt hat which hung shapeless from a nail on the opposite wall.

Which, of course, was absurd.