t was from him that Lawson got his paradoxes; and even
Clutton, who strained after individuality, expressed himself in the terms
he had insensibly acquired from the older man. It was his ideas that they
bandied about at table, and on his authority they formed their judgments.
They made up for the respect with which unconsciously they treated him by
laughing at his foibles and lamenting his vices.

"Of course, poor old Cronshaw will never do any good," they said. "He's
quite hopeless."

They prided themselves on being alone in appreciating his genius; and
though, with the contempt of youth for the follies of middle-age, they
patronised him among themselves, they did not fail to look upon it as a
feather in their caps if he had chosen a time when only one was there to
be particularly wonderful. Cronshaw never came to Gravier's. For the last
four years he had lived in squalid conditions with a woman whom only
Lawson had once seen, in a tiny apartment on the sixth floor of one of the
most dilapidated houses on the Quai des Grands Augustins: Lawson described
with gusto the filth, the untidiness, the litter.

"And the stink nearly blew your head off."

"Not at dinner, Lawson," expostulated one of the others.

But he would not deny himself the pleasure of giving picturesque details
of the odours which met his nostril. With a fierce delight in his own
realism he described the woman who had opened the door for him. She was
dark, small, and fat, quite young, with black hair that seemed always on
the point of coming down. She wore a slatternly blouse and no corsets.
With her red cheeks, large sensual mouth, and shining, lewd eyes, she
reminded you of the Bohemienne in the Louvre by Franz Hals. She had a
flaunting vulgarity which amused and yet horrified. A scrubby, unwashed
baby was playing on the floor. It was known that the slut deceived
Cronshaw with the most worthless ragamuffins of the Quarter, and it was a
mystery to the ingenuous youths who absorbed his wisdom over a cafe table
that Cronshaw with his keen intellect and his passion for beauty could
ally himself to such a creature. But he seemed to revel in the coarseness
of her language and would often report some phrase which reeked of the
gutter. He referred to her ironically as la fille de mon concierge.
Cronshaw was very poor. He earned a bare subsistence by writing on the
exhibitions of pictures for one or two English papers, and he did a
certain amount of translati