In September, 1882, I came back to New York from a five years' residence as an art student in Paris, and took a studio with living rooms attached in St. Mark's place.
The house, which had formerly been a private dwelling, was owned and the three lower floors were occupied by an old Frenchman named Archimede Muselle. A large sign under the drawing room windows read as follows, in letters of gold upon a sable field:
I chanced to be passing through St. Mark's place one day shortly after my arrival here, when that sign caught my attention. It struck me as delightful. Exterminator of insects! In its ingenuous incongruity, its fearless blending of the terrible with the minute, it seemed not only intrinsically pleasant but very agreeably and characteristically Gallic. I halted and stood still before it, wrapped in contemplation, wondering the while what sort of personage this exterminator might be. My imagination pictured a roly poly little fellow, French to his finger tips, with a glossy bald pate, a blandly benevolent countenance, an effusive manner and then a fierce defiant black mustache, waxed and curled upward at the ends—un Roland Furieux, mais bien petit, as Grinchette is described in the play. Anyhow, he would be, like his ensign, anticlimacteric; a droll mixture of ferocity arid mildness, of the bellicose and the bourgeois; breathing simultaneously fire, vengeance and a gentle odor of soupe aux choux. I almost wished I had some insect to offer up for extermination, so that I might make an excuse for paying him a visit and scraping an acquaintance. In default of any I was at the point of moving off and continuing my journey when I happened to observe another and smaller sign, suspended below the big one, advertising a "Studio Apartment to Let."
A studio apartment! The very thing I was hunting for. I climbed the steps, rang the bell and told the young man who opened to me that I should like to look at the studio apartment.
The young man—he was in his shirt sleeves; he emitted an aroma that transported me in fancy to Marseilles, and he spoke like a Frenchman who had picked up his English on the Bowery—the young man said, "Walk into de awffus and set down; I go call de bosse."
"The boss." I queried. "That is Mr. Muselle?"
"Sure," the young man responded.
The office into which he ushered me was a section partitioned off from what had of old time been the drawing room of the house. A large desk stood between the windows and behind it sat a snub nosed young lady with ruddy hair writing in a huge leather bound account book. I took possession of one of the half dozen chairs that were ranged in a row along the wall, and waited expectantly for the exterminator to materialize.
I did not have to wait very long, and then of course I saw that he corresponded in no particular with my pre-conception, being neither roly poly nor bland of countenance nor fiercely mustachioed. But I saw also and instantly that he was a vast improvement upon it. He looked precisely as though he had stepped out of a French vaudeville. Indeed, if an accurate portrait of him had been shown to me beforehand I could never have believed that it represented a real-man in real life. I should have taken for granted that it was either a fancy sketch, or a caricature, or a bit from the theatre.