came to
see them. His shop was the scene of many a wordy critical battle.
Gauguin uttered the paradox, "Nothing so resembles a daub as a
masterpiece," and the novelist Elemir Bourges cried, "This is the
painting of a vintager!" Alfred Stevens roared in the presence of the
Cezannes, Anquetin admired; but, as Bernard adds, Jacques Blanche
bought. So did Durand-Ruel, who has informed me that a fine Cezanne
to-day is a difficult fish to hook. The great public won't have him,
and the amateurs who adore him jealously hold on to their prizes.

The socialism of Pere Tanguy was of a mild order. He pitied with a
Tolstoyan pity the sufferings of the poor. He did not hate the rich,
nor did he stand at street corners preaching the beauties of torch and
bomb. A simple soul, uneducated, not critical, yet with an instinctive
_flair_ for the coming triumphs of his young men, he espoused the
cause of his clients because they were poverty-stricken, unknown, and
revolutionists--an aesthetic revolution was his wildest dream. He said
of Cezanne that "Papa Cezanne always quits a picture before he
finishes it. If he moves he lets his canvases lie in the vacated
studio." He no doubt benefited by this carelessness of the painter.
Cezanne worked slowly, but he never stopped working; he left nothing
to hazard, and, astonishing fact, he spent every morning at the
Louvre. There he practised his daily scales, optically speaking,
before taking up the brush for the day's work. Many of Vincent von
Gogh's pictures Tanguy owned. This was about 1886. The eccentric,
gifted Dutchman attracted the poor merchant by his ferocious
socialism. He was, indeed, a ferocious temperament, working like a
madman, painting with his colour tubes when he had no brushes, and
literally living in the _boutique_ of Tanguy. The latter always read
_Le Cri du Peuple_ and _L'Intransigeant_, and believed all he read. He
did not care much for Van Gogh's compositions, no doubt agreeing with
Cezanne, who, viewing them for the first time, calmly remarked to the
youth, "Sincerely, you paint like a crazy man." A prophetic note! Van
Gogh frequented a tavern kept by an old model, an Italian woman. It
bore the romantic title of The Tambourine. When he couldn't pay his
bills he would cover the walls with furious frescoes, flowers of
tropical exuberance, landscapes that must have been seen in a
nightmare. He was painting at this time three pictures a day. He would
part with a canvas at the e