eeted with
acclamations by an appreciative public; the older ones who had painted
pictures which had been seen at the Palais de l'Industrie and had not
been appreciated at all; the poets whose sonnets were of too subtle an
order to reach the common herd; the students who had lived beyond the
means allowed them by their highly respectable families, and who were
consequently somewhat off color in the eyes of the respectable
families in question--these and others of the same class, all more or
less poor, more or less out at elbows, and more or less in debt. And
yet, as I have said, they lived gayly. They painted, and admired or
criticised each other's pictures; they lent and borrowed with equal
freedom; they bemoaned their wrongs loudly, and sang and laughed more
loudly still as the mood seized them; and any special ill-fortune
befalling one of their number generally aroused a display of sympathy
which, though it might not last long, was always a source of
consolation to the luckless one.

But the American, notwithstanding he had been in the house for months,
had never become one of them. He had been seen in the early spring
going up the stairway to his room, which was a mere garret on the
sixth story, and it had been expected among them that in a day or
so he would present himself for inspection. But this he did not do,
and when he encountered any of their number in his out-goings or
in-comings he returned their greetings gently in imperfect French. He
spoke slowly and with difficulty, but there was no coldness in his
voice or manners, and yet none got much further than the greeting.

He was a young fellow, scarcely of middle height, frail in figure,
hollow-chested, and with a gentle face and soft, deeply set dark eyes.
That he worked hard and lived barely it was easy enough to discover.
Part of each day he spent in the various art galleries, and after his
return from these visits he was seen no more until the following
morning.

"Until the last ray of light disappears he is at his easel," said a
young student whom a gay escapade had temporarily banished to the
fifth floor. "I hear him move now and then and cough. He has a
villainous cough."

"He is one of the enthusiasts," said another. "One can read it in his
face. What fools they are--these enthusiasts! They throw away life
that a crown of laurel may be laid upon their coffins."

In the summer some of them managed to leave Paris, and the rest had
enough to do to