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--p