It was only when we issued again from the museum that a difference of
race broke up the party. Dijon proposed an adjournment to a cafe, there
to finish the afternoon on beer; the elder Stennis, revolted at the
thought, moved for the country, a forest if possible, and a long walk.
At once the English speakers rallied to the name of any exercise: even
to me, who have been often twitted with my sedentary habits, the thought
of country air and stillness proved invincibly attractive. It appeared,
upon investigation, we had just time to hail a cab and catch one of the
fast trains for Fontainebleau. Beyond the clothes we stood in, all were
destitute of what is called (with dainty vagueness) personal effects;
and it was earnestly mooted, on the other side, whether we had not time
to call upon the way and pack a satchel? But the Stennis boys exclaimed
upon our effeminacy. They had come from London, it appeared, a week
before with nothing but greatcoats and tooth-brushes. No baggage--there
was the secret of existence. It was expensive, to be sure; for every
time you had to comb your hair, a barber must be paid, and every time
you changed your linen, one shirt must be bought and another thrown
away; but anything was better (argued these young gentlemen) than to
be the slaves of haversacks. "A fellow has to get rid gradually of all
material attachments; that was manhood" (said they); "and as long as you
were bound down to anything,--house, umbrella, or portmanteau,--you were
still tethered by the umbilical cord." Something engaging in this
theory carried the most of us away. The two Frenchmen, indeed, retired,
scoffing, to their bock; and Romney, being too poor to join the
excursion on his own resources and too proud to borrow, melted
unobtrusively away. Meanwhile the remainder of the company crowded
the benches of a cab; the horse was urged (as horses have to be) by an
appeal to the pocket of the driver; the train caught by the inside of
a minute; and in less than an hour and a half we were breathing deep
of the sweet air of the forest and stretching our legs up the hill from
Fontainebleau octroi, bound for Barbizon. That the leading members of
our party covered the distance in fifty-one minutes and a half is (I
believe) one of the historic landmarks of the colony; but you will
scarce be surprised to learn that I was somewhat in the rear. Myner,
a comparatively philosophic Briton, kept me company in my deliberate
advance; the glory of the sun's going down, the fall of the long
shadows, the inimitable scent and the inspiration of the woods, attuned
me more and more to walk in a silence which progressively infected my
companion; and I remember that, when at last he spoke, I was startled
from a deep abstraction.

"Your father seems to be a pretty good kind of a father," said he. "Why
don't he come to see you?" I was ready with some dozen of reasons, and
had more in stock; but Myner, with that shrewdness which made him feared
and admired, suddenly fixed me with his eye-glass and asked, "Ever press
him?"

The blood came in my face. No; I had never pressed him; I had never even
encouraged him to come. I was proud of him; proud of his handsome looks,
of his kind, gentle ways, of that bright face he could show when others
were happy; proud, too (meanly proud, if you like) of his great wealth
and startling liberalities. And yet he would have been in the way of my
Paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. I had feared to
expose to criticism his innocent remarks on art; I had told myself, I
had even partly believed, he did not want to come; I had been (and still
am) convinced that he was sure to be unhappy out of Muskegon; in short,
I had a thousand reasons, good and bad, not all of which could alter one
iota of the fact that I knew he only waited for my invitation.

"Thank you, Myner," said I; "you're a much better fellow than ever I
supposed. I'll write to-night."

"O, you're a pretty decent sort yourself," returned Myner, with more
than his usual flippancy of manner, but (as I was gratefully aware) not
a trace of his occasional irony of meaning.

Well, these were brave days, on which I could dwell forever. Brave,
too, were those that followed, when Pinkerton and I walked Paris and the
suburbs, viewing and pricing houses for my new establishment, or covered
ourselves with dust and returned laden with Chinese gods and brass
warming-pans from the dealers in antiquities. I found Pinkerton well
up in the situation of these establishments as well as in the current
prices, and with quite a smattering of critical judgment; it turned out
he was investing capital in pictures and curiosities for the States, and
the superficial thoroughness of the creature appeared in the fact, that
although he would never be a connoisseur, he was already something of
an expert. The things themselves left him as near as may be cold; but he
had a joy of his own in understanding how to buy and sell them.

In such engagements the time passed until I might very well expect
an answer from my father. Two mails followed each other, and brought
nothing. By the third I received a long and almost incoherent letter
of remorse, encouragement, consolation, and despair. From this pitiful
document, which (with a movement of piety) I burned as soon as I had
read it, I gathered that the bubble of my father's wealth was burst,
that he was now both penniless and sick; and that I, so far from
expecting ten thousand dollars to throw away in juvenile extravagance,
must look no longer for the quarterly remittances on which I lived. My
case was hard enough; but I had sense enough to perceive, and decency
enough to do my duty. I sold my curiosities, or rather I sent Pinkerton
to sell them; and he had previously bought and now disposed of them so
wisely that the loss was trifling. This, with what remained of my last
allowance, left me at the head of no less than five thousand francs.
Five hundred I reserved for my own immediate necessities; the rest I
mailed inside of the week to my father at Muskegon, where they came in
time to pay his funeral expenses.

The news of his death was scarcely a surprise and scarce a grief to me.
I could not conceive my father a poor man. He had led too long a life
of thoughtless and generous profusion to endure the change; and though I
grieved for myself, I was able to rejoice that my father had been taken
from the battle. I grieved, I say, for myself; and it is probable there
were at the same date many thousands of persons grieving with less
cause. I had lost my father; I had lost the allowance; my whole fortune
(including what had been returned from Muskegon) scarce amounted to
a thousand francs; and to crown my sorrows, the statuary contract
had changed hands. The new contractor had a son of his own, or else a
nephew; and it was signified to me, with business-like plainness, that I
must find another market for my pigs. In the meanwhile I had given up my
room, and slept on a truckle-bed in the corner of the studio, where as I
read myself to sleep at night, and when I awoke in the morning, that now
useless bulk, the Genius of Muskegon, was ever present to my eyes. Poor
stone lady! born to be enthroned under the gilded, echoing dome of the
new capitol, whither was she now to drift? for what base purposes be
ultimately broken up, like an unseaworthy ship? and what should befall
her ill-starred artificer, standing, with his thousand francs, on the
threshold of a life so hard as that of the unbefriended sculptor?

It was a subject often and earnestly debated by myself and Pinkerton.
In his opinion, I should instantly discard my profession. "Just drop it,
here and now," he would say. "Come back home with me, and let's throw
our whole soul into business. I have the capital; you bring the culture.
Dodd & Pinkerton--I never saw a better name for an advertisement; and
you can't think, Loudon, how much depends upon a name." On my side, I
would admit that a sculptor should possess one of three things--capital,
influence, or an energy only to be qualified as hellish. The first two
I had now lost; to the third I never had the smallest claim; and yet I
wanted the cowardice (or perhaps it was the courage) to turn my back
on my career without a fight. I told him, besides, that however poor
my chances were in sculpture, I was convinced they were yet worse in
business, for which I equally lacked taste and aptitude. But upon this
head, he was my father over again; assured me that I spoke in ignorance;
that any intelligent and cultured person was Bound to succeed; that I
must, besides, have inherited some of my father's fitness; and, at
any rate, that I had been regularly trained for that career in the
commercial college.


"Pinkerton," I said, "can't you understand that, as long as I was there,
I never took the smallest interest in any stricken thing? The whole
affair was poison to me."

"It's not possible," he would cry; "it can't be; you couldn't live in
the midst of it and not feel the charm; with all your poetry of soul,
you couldn't help! Loudon," he would go on, "you drive me crazy. You
expect a man to be all broken up about the sunset, and not to care a
dime for a place where fortunes are fought for and made and lost all
day; or for a career that consists in studying up life till you have it
at your finger-ends, spying out every cranny where you can get your
hand in and a dollar out, and standing there in the midst--one foot on
bankruptcy, the other on a borrowed dollar, and the whole thing spinning
round you like a mill--raking in the stamps, in spite of fate and
fortune."

To this romance of dickering I would reply with the romance (which is
also the virtue) of art: reminding him of those examples of constancy
through many tribulations, with which the role of Apollo is illustrated;
from the case of Millet, to those of many of our friends and comrades,
who had chosen this agreeable mountain path through life, and were now
bravely clambering among rocks and brambles, penniless and hopeful.

"You will never understand it, Pinkerton," I would say. "You look to the
result, you want to see some profit of your endeavours: that is why you
could never learn to paint, if you lived to be Methusalem. The result
is always a fizzle: the eyes of the artist are turned in; he lives for
a frame of mind. Look at Romney, now. There is the nature of the artist.
He hasn't a cent; and if you offered him to-morrow the command of an
army, or the presidentship of the United States, he wouldn't take it,
and you know he wouldn't."

"I suppose not," Pinkerton would cry, scouring his hair with both his
hands; "and I can't see why; I can't see what in fits he would be after,
not to; I don't seem to rise to these views. Of course, it's the
fault of not having had advantages in early life; but, Loudon, I'm so
miserably low that it seems to me silly. The fact is," he might add with
a smile, "I don't seem to have the least use for a frame of mind without
square meals; and you can't get it out of my head that it's a man's duty
to die rich, if he can."

"What for?" I asked him once.

"O, I don't know," he replied. "Why in snakes should anybody want to be
a sculptor, if you come to that? I would love to sculp myself. But what
I can't see is why you should want to do nothing else. It seems to argue
a poverty of nature."

Whether or not he ever came to understand me--and I have been so tossed
about since then that I am not very sure I understand myself--he soon
perceived that I was perfectly in earnest; and after about ten days
of argument, suddenly dropped the subject, and announced that he was
wasting capital, and must go home at once. No doubt he should have gone
long before, and had already lingered over his intended time for the
sake of our companionship and my misfortune; but man is so unjustly
minded that the very fact, which ought to have disarmed, only embittered
my vexation. I resented his departure in the light of a desertion; I
would not say, but doubtless I betrayed it; and something hang-dog in
the man's face and bearing led me to believe he was himself remorseful.
It is certain at least that, during the time of his preparations, we
drew sensibly apart--a circumstance that I recall with shame. On the
last day, he had me to dinner at a restaurant which he knew I had
formerly frequented, and had only forsworn of late from considerations
of economy. He seemed ill at ease; I was myself both sorry and sulky;
and the meal passed with little conversation.

"Now, Loudon," said he, with a visible effort, after the coffee was
come and our pipes lighted, "you can never understand the gratitude and
loyalty I bear you. You don't know what a boon it is to be taken up by
a man that stands on the pinnacle of civilization; you can't think how
it's refined and purified me, how it's appealed to my spiritual nature;
and I want to tell you that I would die at your door like a dog."

I don't know what answer I tried to make, but he cut me short.

"Let me say it out!" he cried. "I revere you for your whole-souled
devotion to art; I can't rise to it, but there's a strain of poetry in
my nature, Loudon, that responds to it. I want you to carry it out, and
I mean to help you."

"Pinkerton, what nonsense is this?" I interrupted.

"Now don't get mad, Loudon; this is a plain piece of business," said he;
"it's done every day; it's even typical. How are all those fellows over
here in Paris, Henderson, Sumner, Long?--it's all the same story: a
young man just plum full of artistic genius on the one side, a man of
business on the other who doesn't know what to do with his dollars--"

"But, you fool, you're as poor as a rat," I cried.

"You wait till I get my irons in the fire!" returned Pinkerton. "I'm
bound to be rich; and I tell you I mean to have some of the fun as I go
along. Here's your first allowance; take it at the hand of a friend; I'm
one that holds friendship sacred as you do yourself. It's only a hundred
francs; you'll get the same every month, and as soon as my business
begins to expand we'll increase it to something fitting. And so far from
it's being a favour, just let me handle your statuary for the American
market, and I'll call it one of the smartest strokes of business in my
life."

It took me a long time, and it had cost us both much grateful and
painful emotion, before I had finally managed to refuse his offer and
compounded for a bottle of particular wine. He dropped the subject at
last suddenly with a "Never mind; that's all done with," nor did he
again refer to the subject, though we passed together the rest of the
afternoon, and I accompanied him, on his departure; to the doors of the
waiting-room at St. Lazare. I felt myself strangely alone; a voice told
me that I had rejected both the counsels of wisdom and the helping
hand of friendship; and as I passed through the great bright city on
my homeward way, I measured it for the first time with the eye of an
adversary.




CHAPTER V. IN WHICH I AM DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS.


In no part of the world is starvation an agreeable business; but I
believe it is admitted there is no worse place to starve in than this
city of Paris. The appearances of life are there so especially gay,
it is so much a magnified beer-garden, the houses are so ornate, the
theatres so numerous, the very pace of the vehicles is so brisk, that a
man in any deep concern of mind or pain of body is constantly driven in
upon himself. In his own eyes, he seems the one serious creature moving
in a world of horrible unreality; voluble people issuing from a
cafe, the queue at theatre doors, Sunday cabfuls of second-rate
pleasure-seekers, the bedizened ladies of the pavement, the show in the
jewellers' windows--all the familiar sights contributing to flout his
own unhappiness, want, and isolation. At the same time, if he be at all
after my pattern, he is perhaps supported by a childish satisfaction:
this is life at last, he may tell himself, this is the real thing;
the bladders on which I was set swimming are now empty, my own weight
depends upon the ocean; by my own exertions I must perish or succeed;
and I am now enduring in the vivid fact, what I so much delighted to
read of in the case of Lonsteau or Lucien, Rodolphe or Schaunard.

Of the steps of my misery, I cannot tell at length. In ordinary times
what were politically called "loans" (although they were never meant to
be repaid) were matters of constant course among the students, and many
a man has partly lived on them for years. But my misfortune befell me
at an awkward juncture. Many of my friends were gone; others were
themselves in a precarious situation. Romney (for instance) was reduced
to tramping Paris in a pair of country sabots, his only suit of clothes
so imperfect (in spite of cunningly adjusted pins) that the authorities
at the Luxembourg suggested his withdrawal from the gallery. Dijon, too,
was on a leeshore, designing clocks and gas-brackets for a dealer; and
the most he could do was to offer me a corner of his studio where I
might work. My own studio (it will be gathered) I had by that time lost;
and in the course of my expulsion the Genius of Muskegon was finally
separated from her author. To continue to possess a full-sized statue,
a man must have a studio, a gallery, or at least the freedom of a back
garden. He cannot carry it about with him, like a satchel, in the
bottom of a cab, nor can he cohabit in a garret, ten by fifteen, with
so momentous a companion. It was my first idea to leave her behind at
my departure. There, in her birthplace, she might lend an inspiration,
methought, to my successor. But the proprietor, with whom I had
unhappily quarrelled, seized the occasion to be disagreeable, and called
upon me to remove my property. For a man in such straits as I now found
myself, the hire of a lorry was a consideration; and yet even that I
could have faced, if I had had anywhere to drive to after it was hired.
Hysterical laughter seized upon me as I beheld (in imagination) myself,
the waggoner, and the Genius of Muskegon, standing in the public view of
Paris, without the shadow of a destination; perhaps driving at last
to the nearest rubbish heap, and dumping there, among the ordures of a
city, the beloved child of my invention. From these extremities I was
relieved by a seasonable offer, and I parted from the Genius of Muskegon
for thirty francs. Where she now stands, under what name she is admired
or criticised, history does not inform us; but I like to think she
may adorn the shrubbery of some suburban tea-garden, where holiday
shop-girls hang their hats upon the mother, and their swains (by way
of an approach of gallantry) identify the winged infant with the god of
love.

In a certain cabman's eating-house on the outer boulevard I got credit
for my midday meal. Supper I was supposed not to require, sitting
down nightly to the delicate table of some rich acquaintances. This
arrangement was extremely ill-considered. My fable, credible enough at
first, and so long as my clothes were in good order, must have seemed
worse than doubtful after my coat became frayed about the edges, and
my boots began to squelch and pipe along the restaurant floors. The
allowance of one meal a day besides, though suitable enough to the state
of my finances, agreed poorly with my stomach. The restaurant was a
place I had often visited experimentally, to taste the life of students
then more unfortunate than myself; and I had never in those days entered
it without disgust, or left it without nausea. It was strange to find
myself sitting down with avidity, rising up with satisfaction, and
counting the hours that divided me from my return to such a table. But
hunger is a great magician; and so soon as I had spent my ready cash,
and could no longer fill up on bowls of chocolate or hunks of bread,
I must depend entirely on that cabman's eating-house, and upon certain
rare, long-expected, long-remembered windfalls. Dijon (for instance)
might get paid for some of his pot-boiling work, or else an old friend
would pass through Paris; and then I would be entertained to a meal
after my own soul, and contract a Latin Quarter loan, which would keep
me in tobacco and my morning coffee for a fortnight. It might be thought
the latter would appear the more important. It might be supposed that a
life, led so near the confines of actual famine, should have dulled the
nicety of my palate. On the contrary, the poorer a man's diet, the more
sharply is he set on dainties. The last of my ready cash, about thirty
francs, was deliberately squandered on a single dinner; and a great part
of my time when I was alone was passed upon the details of imaginary
feasts.

One gleam of hope visited me--an order for a bust from a rich
Southerner. He was free-handed, jolly of speech, merry of countenance;
kept me in good humour through the sittings, and when they were over,
carried me off with him to dinner and the sights of Paris. I ate well;
I laid on flesh; by all accounts, I made a favourable likeness of the
being, and I confess I thought my future was assured. But when the bust
was done, and I had despatched it across the Atlantic, I could never
so much as learn of its arrival. The blow felled me; I should have
lain down and tried no stroke to right myself, had not the honour of
my country been involved. For Dijon improved the opportunity in the
European style; informing me (for the first time) of the manners of
America: how it was a den of banditti without the smallest rudiment of
law or order, and debts could be there only collected with a shotgun.
"The whole world knows it," he would say; "you are alone, mon petit
Loudon, you are alone to be in ignorance of these facts. The judges of
the Supreme Court fought but the other day with stilettos on the bench
at Cincinnati. You should read the little book of one of my friends: _Le
Touriste dans le Far-West_; you will see it all there in good French."
At last, incensed by days of such discussion, I undertook to prove to
him the contrary, and put the affair in the hands of my late father's
lawyer. From him I had the gratification of hearing, after a due
interval, that my debtor was dead of the yellow fever in Key West, and
had left his affairs in some confusion. I suppress his name; for though
he treated me with cruel nonchalance, it is probable he meant to deal
fairly in the end.

Soon after this a shade of change in my reception at the cabman's
eating-house marked the beginning of a new phase in my distress. The
first day, I told myself it was but fancy; the next, I made quite sure
it was a fact; the third, in mere panic I stayed away, and went for
forty-eight hours fasting. This was an act of great unreason; for the
debtor who stays away is but the more remarked, and the boarder who
misses a meal is sure to be accused of infidelity. On the fourth day,
therefore, I returned, inwardly quaking. The proprietor looked askance
upon my entrance; the waitresses (who were his daughters) neglected my
wants and sniffed at the affected joviality of my salutations; last and
most plain, when I called for a suisse (such as was being served to all
the other diners) I was bluntly told there were no more. It was obvious
I was near the end of my tether; one plank divided me from want, and now
I felt it tremble. I passed a sleepless night, and the first thing in
the morning took my way to Myner's studio. It was a step I had long
meditated and long refrained from; for I was scarce intimate with the
Englishman; and though I knew him to possess plenty of money, neither
his manner nor his reputation were the least encouraging to beggars.


I found him at work on a picture, which I was able conscientiously
to praise, dressed in his usual tweeds, plain, but pretty fresh, and
standing out in disagreeable contrast to my own withered and degraded
outfit. As we talked, he continued to shift his eyes watchfully between
his handiwork and the fat model, who sat at the far end of the studio
in a state of nature, with one arm gallantly arched above her head. My
errand would have been difficult enough under the best of circumstances:
placed between Myner, immersed in his art, and the white, fat, naked
female in a ridiculous attitude, I found it quite impossible. Again and
again I attempted to approach the point, again and again fell back on
commendations of the picture; and it was not until the model had enjoyed
an interval of repose, during which she took the conversation in her
own hands and regaled us (in a soft, weak voice) with details as to her
husband's prosperity, her sister's lamented decline from the paths
of virtue, and the consequent wrath of her father, a peasant of stern
principles, in the vicinity of Chalons on the Marne;--it was not, I say,
until after this was over, and I had once more cleared my throat for
the attack, and once more dropped aside into some commonplace about the
picture, that Myner himself brought me suddenly and vigorously to the
point.

"You didn't come here to talk this rot," said he.

"No," I replied sullenly; "I came to borrow money."

He painted awhile in silence.

"I don't think we were ever very intimate?" he asked.

"Thank you," said I. "I can take my answer," and I made as if to go,
rage boiling in my heart.

"Of course you can go if you like," said Myner; "but I advise you to
stay and have it out."

"What more is there to say?" I cried. "You don't want to keep me here
for a needless humiliation?"

"Look here, Dodd, you must try and command your temper," said he. "This
interview is of your own seeking, and not mine; if you suppose it's not
disagreeable to me, you're wrong; and if you think I will give you money
without knowing thoroughly about your prospects, you take me for a fool.
Besides," he added, "if you come to look at it, you've got over the
worst of it by now: you have done the asking, and you have every reason
to know I mean to refuse. I hold out no false hopes, but it may be worth
your while to let me judge."

Thus--I was going to say--encouraged, I stumbled through my story; told
him I had credit at the cabman's eating-house, but began to think it was
drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where I
tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda
and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which
had never (up to that day) been honoured with the least approval.

"And your room?" asked Myner.

"O, my room is all right, I think," said I. "She is a very good old
lady, and has never even mentioned her bill."

"Because she is a very good old lady, I don't see why she should be
fined," observed Myner.

"What do you mean by that?" I cried.

"I mean this," said he. "The French give a great deal of credit amongst
themselves; they find it pays on the whole, or the system would hardly
be continued; but I can't see where WE come in; I can't see that it's
honest of us Anglo-Saxons to profit by their easy ways, and then skip
over the Channel or (as you Yankees do) across the Atlantic."

"But I'm not proposing to skip," I objected.

"Exactly," he replied. "And shouldn't you? There's the problem. You
seem to me to have a lack of sympathy for the proprietors of cabmen's
eating-houses. By your own account you're not getting on: the longer you
stay, it'll only be the more out of the pocket of the dear old lady at
your lodgings. Now, I'll tell you what I'll do: if you consent to go,
I'll pay your passage to New York, and your railway fare and expenses
to Muskegon (if I have the name right) where your father lived, where he
must have left friends, and where, no doubt, you'll find an opening. I
don't seek any gratitude, for of course you'll think me a beast; but I
do ask you to pay it back when you are able. At any rate, that's all
I can do. It might be different if I thought you a genius, Dodd; but I
don't, and I advise you not to."


"I think that was uncalled for, at least," said I.

"I daresay it was," he returned, with the same steadiness. "It seemed to
me pertinent; and, besides, when you ask me for money upon no security,
you treat me with the liberty of a friend, and it's to be presumed that
I can do the like. But the point is, do you accept?"

"No, thank you," said I; "I have another string to my bow."

"All right," says Myner. "Be sure it's honest."

"Honest? honest?" I cried. "What do you mean by calling my honesty in
question?"

"I won't, if you don't like it," he replied. "You seem to think
honesty as easy as Blind Man's Buff: I don't. It's some difference of
definition."

I went straight from this irritating interview, during which Myner had
never discontinued painting, to the studio of my old master. Only one
card remained for me to play, and I was now resolved to play it: I
must drop the gentleman and the frock-coat, and approach art in the
workman's tunic.

"Tiens, this little Dodd!" cried the master; and then, as his eye fell
on my dilapidated clothing, I thought I could perceive his countenance
to darken.

I made my plea in English; for I knew, if he were vain of anything, it
was of his achievement of the island tongue. "Master," said I, "will you
take me in your studio again? but this time as a workman."

"I sought your fazer was immensely reech," said he.

I explained to him that I was now an orphan and penniless.

He shook his head. "I have betterr workmen waiting at my door," said he,
"far betterr workmen.

"You used to think something of my work, sir," I pleaded.

"Somesing, somesing--yes!" he cried; "enough for a son of a reech
man--not enough for an orphan. Besides, I sought you might learn to be
an artist; I did not sink you might learn to be a workman."

On a certain bench on the outer boulevard, not far from the tomb of
Napoleon, a bench shaded at that date by a shabby tree, and commanding
a view of muddy roadway and blank wall, I sat down to wrestle with my
misery. The weather was cheerless and dark; in three days I had eaten
but once; I had no tobacco; my shoes were soaked, my trousers horrid
with mire; my humour and all the circumstances of the time and place
lugubriously attuned. Here were two men who had both spoken fairly of my
work while I was rich and wanted nothing; now that I was poor and lacked
all: "no genius," said the one; "not enough for an orphan," the other;
and the first offered me my passage like a pauper immigrant, and the
second refused me a day's wage as a hewer of stone--plain dealing for
an empty belly. They had not been insincere in the past; they were not
insincere to-day: change of circumstance had introduced a new criterion:
that was all.

But if I acquitted my two Job's comforters of insincerity, I was yet far
from admitting them infallible. Artists had been contemned before,
and had lived to turn the laugh on their contemners. How old was Corot
before he struck the vein of his own precious metal? When had a young
man been more derided (or more justly so) than the god of my admiration,
Balzac? Or if I required a bolder inspiration, what had I to do but turn
my head to where the gold dome of the Invalides glittered against inky
squalls, and recall the tale of him sleeping there: from the day when a
young artillery-sub could be giggled at and nicknamed Puss-in-Boots by
frisky misses; on to the days of so many crowns and so many victories,
and so many hundred mouths of cannon, and so many thousand war-hoofs
trampling the roadways of astonished Europe eighty miles in front of
the grand army? To go back, to give up, to proclaim myself a failure, an
ambitious failure, first a rocket, then a stick! I, Loudon Dodd, who
had refused all other livelihoods with scorn, and been advertised in the
Saint Joseph _Sunday Herald_ as a patriot and an artist, to be returned
upon my native Muskegon like damaged goods, and go the circuit of my
father's acquaintance, cap in hand, and begging to sweep offices! No, by
Napoleon! I would die at my chosen trade; and the two who had that
day flouted me should live to envy my success, or to weep tears of
unavailing penitence behind my pauper coffin.

Meantime, if my courage was still undiminished, I was none the nearer to
a meal. At no great distance my cabman's eating-house stood, at the
tail of a muddy cab-rank, on the shores of a wide thoroughfare of mud,
offering (to fancy) a face of ambiguous invitation. I might be received,
I might once more fill my belly there; on the other hand, it was perhaps
this day the bolt was destined to fall, and I might be expelled instead,
with vulgar hubbub. It was policy to make the attempt, and I knew it was
policy; but I had already, in the course of that one morning, endured
too many affronts, and I felt I could rather starve than face another. I
had courage and to spare for the future, none left for that day; courage
for the main campaign, but not a spark of it for that preliminary
skirmish of the cabman's restaurant. I continued accordingly to sit
upon my bench, not far from the ashes of Napoleon, now drowsy, now
light-headed, now in complete mental obstruction, or only conscious
of an animal pleasure in quiescence; and now thinking, planning, and
remembering with unexampled clearness, telling myself tales of sudden
wealth, and gustfully ordering and greedily consuming imaginary meals:
in the course of which I must have dropped asleep.

It was towards dark that I was suddenly recalled to famine by a cold
souse of rain, and sprang shivering to my feet. For a moment I stood
bewildered: the whole train of my reasoning and dreaming passed afresh
through my mind; I was again tempted, drawn as if with cords, by
the image of the cabman's eating-house, and again recoiled from the
possibility of insult. "Qui dort dine," thought I to myself; and took my
homeward way with wavering footsteps, through rainy streets in which
the lamps and the shop-windows now began to gleam; still marshalling
imaginary dinners as I went.

"Ah, Monsieur Dodd," said the porter, "there has been a registered
letter for you. The facteur will bring it again to-morrow."

A registered letter for me, who had been so long without one? Of what
it could possibly contain, I had no vestige of a guess; nor did I delay
myself guessing; far less form any conscious plan of dishonesty: the
lies flowed from me like a natural secretion.

"O," said I, "my remittance at last! What a bother I should have missed
it! Can you lend me a hundred francs until to-morrow?"


I had never attempted to borrow from the porter till that moment: the
registered letter was, besides, my warranty; and he gave me what he
had--three napoleons and some francs in silver. I pocketed the money
carelessly, lingered a while chaffing, strolled leisurely to the door;
and then (fast as my trembling legs could carry me) round the corner
to the Cafe de Cluny. French waiters are deft and speedy; they were not
deft enough for me; and I had scarce decency to let the man set the wine
upon the table or put the butter alongside the bread, before my glass
and my mouth were filled. Exquisite bread of the Cafe Cluny, exquisite
first glass of old Pomard tingling to my wet feet, indescribable first
olive culled from the hors d'oeuvre--I suppose, when I come to lie
dying, and the lamp begins to grow dim, I shall still recall your
savour. Over the rest of that meal, and the rest of the evening, clouds
lie thick; clouds perhaps of Burgundy; perhaps, more properly, of famine
and repletion.

I remember clearly, at least, the shame, the despair, of the next
morning, when I reviewed what I had done, and how I had swindled the
poor honest porter; and, as if that were not enough, fairly burnt my
ships, and brought bankruptcy home to that last refuge, my garret. The
porter would expect his money; I could not pay him; here was scandal
in the house; and I knew right well the cause of scandal would have to
pack. "What do you mean by calling my honesty in question?" I had cried
the day before, turning upon Myner. Ah, that day before! the day before
Waterloo, the day before the Flood; the day before I had sold the roof
over my head, my future, and my self-respect, for a dinner at the Cafe
Cluny!

In the midst of these lamentations the famous registered letter came
to my door, with healing under its seals. It bore the postmark of
San Francisco, where Pinkerton was already struggling to the neck in
multifarious affairs: it renewed the offer of an allowance, which his
improved estate permitted him to announce at the figure of two hundred
francs a month; and in case I was in some immediate pinch, it enclosed
an introductory draft for forty dollars. There are a thousand excellent
reasons why a man, in this self-helpful epoch, should decline to be
dependent on another; but the most numerous and cogent considerations
all bow to a necessity as stern as mine; and the banks were scarce open
ere the draft was cashed.

It was early in December that I thus sold myself into slavery; and
for six months I dragged a slowly lengthening chain of gratitude and
uneasiness. At the cost of some debt I managed to excel myself and
eclipse the Genius of Muskegon, in a small but highly patriotic Standard
Bearer for the Salon; whither it was duly admitted, where it stood the
proper length of days entirely unremarked, and whence it came back to me
as patriotic as before. I threw my whole soul (as Pinkerton would have
phrased it) into clocks and candlesticks; the devil a candlestick-maker
would have anything to say to my designs. Even when Dijon, with his
infinite good humour and infinite scorn for all such journey-work,
consented to peddle them in indiscriminately with his own, the dealers
still detected and rejected mine. Home they returned to me, true as
the Standard Bearer; who now, at the head of quite a regiment of lesser
idols, began to grow an eyesore in the scanty studio of my friend. Dijon
and I have sat by the hour, and gazed upon that company of images. The
severe, the frisky, the classical, the Louis Quinze, were there--from
Joan of Arc in her soldierly cuirass to Leda with the swan; nay, and
God forgive me for a man that knew better! the humorous was represented
also. We sat and gazed, I say; we criticised, we turned them hither
and thither; even upon the closest inspection they looked quite like
statuettes; and yet nobody would have a gift of them!

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man: but
about the sixth month, when I already owed near two hundred dollars
to Pinkerton, and half as much again in debts scattered about Paris, I
awoke one morning with a horrid sentiment of oppression, and found I
was alone: my vanity had breathed her last during the night. I dared
not plunge deeper in the bog; I saw no hope in my poor statuary; I owned
myself beaten at last; and sitting down in my nightshirt beside the
window, whence I had a glimpse of the tree-tops at the corner of the
boulevard, and where the music of its early traffic fell agreeably upon
my ear, I penned my farewell to Paris, to art, to my whole past life,
and my whole former self. "I give in," I wrote. "When the next allowance
arrives, I shall go straight out West, where you can do what you like
with me."

It is to be understood that Pinkerton had been, in a sense, pressing
me to come from the beginning; depicting his isolation among new
acquaintances, "who have none of them your culture," he wrote;
expressing his friendship in terms so warm that it sometimes embarrassed
me to think how poorly I could echo them; dwelling upon his need for
assistance; and the next moment turning about to commend my resolution
and press me to remain in Paris. "Only remember, Loudon," he would
write, "if you ever DO tire of it, there's plenty of work here for
you--honest, hard, well-paid work, developing the resources of this
practically virgin State. And of course I needn't say what a pleasure
it would be to me if we were going at it SHOULDER TO SHOULDER." I marvel
(looking back) that I could so long have resisted these appeals, and
continue to sink my friend's money in a manner that I knew him to
dislike. At least, when I did awake to any sense of my position, I awoke
to it entirely; and determined not only to follow his counsel for the
future, but even as regards the past, to rectify his losses. For in this
juncture of affairs I called to mind that I was not without a possible
resource, and resolved, at whatever cost of mortification, to beard the
Loudon family in their historic city.

In the excellent Scots' phrase, I made a moonlight flitting, a thing
never dignified, but in my case unusually easy. As I had scarce a pair
of boots worth portage, I deserted the whole of my effects without
a pang. Dijon fell heir to Joan of Arc, the Standard Bearer, and the
Musketeers. He was present when I bought and frugally stocked my new
portmanteau; and it was at the door of the trunk shop that I took my
leave of him, for my last few hours in Paris must be spent alone. It
was alone (and at a far higher figure than my finances warranted) that
I discussed my dinner; alone that I took my ticket at Saint Lazare;
all alone, though in a carriage full of people, that I watched the
moon shine on the Seine flood with its tufted islets, on Rouen with her
spires, and on the shipping in the harbour of Dieppe. When the first
light of the morning called me from troubled slumbers on the deck, I
beheld the dawn at first with pleasure; I watched with pleasure the
green shores of England rising out of rosy haze; I took the salt air
with delight into my nostrils; and then all came back to me; that I was
no longer an artist, no longer myself; that I was leaving all I cared
for, and returning to all that I detested, the slave of debt and
gratitude, a public and a branded failure.

From this picture of my own disgrace and wretchedness, it is not
wonderful if my mind turned with relief to the thought of Pinkerton,
waiting for me, as I knew, with unwearied affection, and regarding me
with a respect that I had never deserved, and might therefore fairly
hope that I should never forfeit. The inequality of our relation struck
me rudely. I must have been stupid, indeed, if I could have considered
the history of that friendship without shame--I, who had given so
little, who had accepted and profited by so much. I had the whole day
before me in London, and I determined (at least in words) to set the
balance somewhat straighter. Seated in the corner of a public place, and
calling for sheet after sheet of paper, I poured forth the expression of
my gratitude, my penitence for the past, my resolutions for the future.
Till now, I told him, my course had been mere selfishness. I had been
selfish to my father and to my friend, taking their help, and denying
them (which was all they asked) the poor gratification of my company and
countenance.

Wonderful are the consolations of literature! As soon as that letter was
written and posted, the consciousness of virtue glowed in my veins like
some rare vintage.




CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH I GO WEST.


I reached my uncle's door next morning in time to sit down with the
family to breakfast. More than three years had intervened almost without
mutation in that stationary household, since I had sat there first, a
young American freshman, bewildered among unfamiliar dainties, Finnan
haddock, kippered salmon, baps and mutton ham, and had wearied my mind
in vain to guess what should be under the tea-cosey. If there were
any change at all, it seemed that I had risen in the family esteem. My
father's death once fittingly referred to, with a ceremonial lengthening
of Scotch upper lips and wagging of the female head, the party launched
at once (God help me) into the more cheerful topic of my own successes.
They had been so pleased to hear such good accounts of me; I was quite
a great man now; where was that beautiful statue of the Genius of
Something or other? "You haven't it here? not here? Really?" asks the
sprightliest of my cousins, shaking curls at me; as though it were
likely I had brought it in a cab, or kept it concealed about my person
like a birthday surprise. In the bosom of this family, unaccustomed to
the tropical nonsense of the West, it became plain the _Sunday Herald_
and poor, blethering Pinkerton had been accepted for their face. It is
not possible to invent a circumstance that could have more depressed
me; and I am conscious that I behaved all through that breakfast like a
whipt schoolboy.

At length, the meal and family prayers being both happily over, I
requested the favour of an interview with Uncle Adam on "the state of
my affairs." At sound of this ominous expression, the good man's face
conspicuously lengthened; and when my grandfather, having had the
proposition repeated to him (for he was hard of hearing) announced his
intention of being present at the interview, I could not but think that
Uncle Adam's sorrow kindled into momentary irritation. Nothing, however,
but the usual grim cordiality appeared upon the surface; and we all
three passed ceremoniously to the adjoining library, a gloomy theatre
for a depressing piece of business. My grandfather charged a clay pipe,
and sat tremulously smoking in a corner of the fireless chimney; behind
him, although the morning was both chill and dark, the window was partly
open and the blind partly down: I cannot depict what an air he had of
being out of place, like a man shipwrecked there. Uncle Adam had his
station at the business table in the midst. Valuable rows of books
looked down upon the place of torture; and I could hear sparrows
chirping in the garden, and my sprightly cousin already banging the
piano and pouring forth an acid stream of song from the drawing-room
overhead.

It was in these circumstances that, with all brevity of speech and a
certain boyish sullenness of manner, looking the while upon the floor,
I informed my relatives of my financial situation: the amount I owed
Pinkerton; the hopelessness of any maintenance from sculpture; the
career offered me in the States; and how, before becoming more beholden
to a stranger, I had judged it right to lay the case before my family.

"I am only sorry you did not come to me at first," said Uncle Adam. "I
take the liberty to say it would have been more decent."

"I think so too, Uncle Adam," I replied; "but you must bear in mind I
was ignorant in what light you might regard my application."

"I hope I would never turn my back on my own flesh and blood," he
returned with emphasis; but to my anxious ear, with more of temper than
affection. "I could never forget you were my sister's son. I regard
this as a manifest duty. I have no choice but to accept the entire
responsibility of the position you have made."

I did not know what else to do but murmur "thank you."


"Yes," he pursued, "and there is something providential in the
circumstance that you come at the right time. In my old firm there is a
vacancy; they call themselves Italian Warehousemen now," he continued,
regarding me with a twinkle of humour; "so you may think yourself
in luck: we were only grocers in my day. I shall place you there
to-morrow."

"Stop a moment, Uncle Adam," I broke in. "This is not at all what I
am asking. I ask you to pay Pinkerton, who is a poor man. I ask you to
clear my feet of debt, not to arrange my life or any part of it."

"If I wished to be harsh, I might remind you that beggars cannot be
choosers," said my uncle; "and as to managing your life, you have tried
your own way already, and you see what you have made of it. You must now
accept the guidance of those older and (whatever you may think of it)
wiser than yourself. All these schemes of your friend (of whom I
know nothing, by the by) and talk of openings in the West, I simply
disregard. I have no idea whatever of your going troking across
a continent on a wild-goose chase. In this situation, which I
am fortunately able to place at your disposal, and which many a
well-conducted young man would be glad to jump at, you will receive, to
begin with, eighteen shillings a week."

"Eighteen shillings a week!" I cried. "Why, my poor friend gave me more
than that for nothing!"

"And I think it is this very friend you are now trying to repay?"
observed my uncle, with an air of one advancing a strong argument.

"Aadam!" said my grandfather.

"I'm vexed you should be present at this business," quoth Uncle Adam,
swinging rather obsequiously towards the stonemason; "but I must remind
you it is of your own seeking."

"Aadam!" repeated the old man.

"Well, sir, I am listening," says my uncle.

My grandfather took a puff or two in silence; and then, "Ye're makin' an
awfu' poor appearance, Aadam," said he.

My uncle visibly reared at the affront. "I'm sorry you should think
so," said he, "and still more sorry you should say so before present
company."

"A believe that; A ken that, Aadam," returned old Loudon, dryly;
"and the curiis thing is, I'm no very carin'. See here, ma man," he
continued, addressing himself to me. "A'm your grandfaither, amn't I
not? Never you mind what Aadam says. A'll see justice din ye. A'm rich."

"Father," said Uncle Adam, "I would like one word with you in private."

I rose to go.

"Set down upon your hinderlands," cried my grandfather, almost savagely.
"If Aadam has anything to say, let him say it. It's me that has the
money here; and by Gravy! I'm goin' to be obeyed."

Upon this scurvy encouragement, it appeared that my uncle had no remark
to offer: twice challenged to "speak out and be done with it," he twice
sullenly declined; and I may mention that about this period of the
engagement, I began to be sorry for him.

"See here, then, Jeannie's yin!" resumed my grandfather. "A'm goin' to
give ye a set-off. Your mither was always my fav'rite, for A never could
agree with Aadam. A like ye fine yoursel'; there's nae noansense aboot
ye; ye've a fine nayteral idee of builder's work; ye've been to France,
where they tell me they're grand at the stuccy. A splendid thing for
ceilin's, the stuccy! and it's a vailyable disguise, too; A don't
believe there's a builder in Scotland has used more stuccy than me. But
as A was sayin', if ye'll follie that trade, with the capital that A'm
goin' to give ye, ye may live yet to be as rich as mysel'. Ye see, ye
would have always had a share of it when A was gone; it appears ye're
needin' it now; well, ye'll get the less, as is only just and proper."