call on him and talk to him, Bancroft, too, wanted to know him. I brought them together, but clearly Taine was not impressed, for Ned out of false shame hardly opened his mouth. But I learned a good deal from Taine, and one illustration of his abides with me as giving a true and vivid conception of art and its ideal. In a lecture he pointed out to his students that a lion was not a running beast, but a great jaw set on four powerful springs of short, massive legs. The artist, he went on, seizing the idea of the animal, may exaggerate the size and strength of the jaw a little, emphasize, too, the springing power in his loins and legs and the tearing strength of his front paws and claws; but if he lengthened his legs or diminished his jaw, he would denaturalize the true idea of the beast and would produce an abortion. The ideal, however, should only be indicated. Taine's talks, too, on literature and the importance of the environment even on great men all made profound impression on me. After listening to him for some time I began to see my way up more clearly. I shall never forget, too, some of his thought inspiring words. Talking one day of the Convent of Monte Cassino, where a hundred generations of students, freed from all the sordid cares of existence, had given night and day to study and thought, and had preserved besides the priceless manuscripts of long past ages and so paved the way for a renascence of learning and thought, he added gravely: «I wonder whether science will ever do as much for her votaries as religion has done for hers: in other words, I wonder will there ever be a laic Monte Cassino!»
Taine was a great teacher and I owe him much kindly encouragement and even enlightenment. I add this last word, because his French freedom of speech came as pure spring water to my thirsty soul. A dozen of us were grouped about him one day talking, when one student with a remarkable gift for vague thought and highfalutin' rhetoric wanted to know what Taine thought of the idea that all the worlds and planets and solar systems were turning round one axis and moving to some divine fulfillment (accomplishment). Taine, who always disliked windy rhetoric, remarked quietly, «The only axis in my knowledge round which everything moves to some accomplishment is a woman's cunt (le con d'une jemme).» They laughed, but not as if the bold word had astonished them. He used it when it was needed, as I have often heard Anatole France use it since, and no one thought anything of it.
In spite of the gorgeous installation of his brunette, Ned at the end of a week found out how blessed are those described in Holy Writ, who fished all night and caught nothing. He had caught a dreadful gonorrhea and was forbidden spirits or wine or coffee till he got well. Exercise, too, was only to be taken in small doses, so it happened that when I went out he had to stay home, and the outlook on the rue St. Jacques was anything but exhilarating. This naturally increased his desire to get about and see things, and as soon as he began to understand spoken French and to speak a little, he chafed against the confinement and a room without a bath. He longed for the centre, for the opera and the boulevards, and nothing would do but we should take rooms in the heart of Paris. He would borrow money from his folks, he said. Like a fool I was willing, and so we took rooms one day in a quiet street just behind the Madeleine, at ten times the price we were paying Marguerite. I soon found that my money was melting, but the life was very pleasant. We often drove in the Bois, went frequently to the opera, the theatres and music-halls and appraised, too, the great restaurants, the Cafe Anglais and the Trois Freres, as if we had been millionaires. As luck would have it, Ned's venereal disease and the doctors became a heavy additional expense that I could ill afford. Suddenly one day I realized that I had only six hundred dollars in the bank: at once I made up my mind to stop and make a fresh start. I told my resolution to Bancroft: he asked me to wait. «He had written to his people for money,» he said,
«he would soon pay his debt to me,» but that wasn't what I wanted. I felt that I had got off the right road because of him and was angry with myself for having wasted my substance in profligate living, and worst of all, in silly luxury and brainless showing off. I declared I was ill and was going to England at once. I must make a new start and accumulate some more money, and a few mornings later I bade Bancroft good-bye and crossed the channel and went on to my sister and father in Tenby, arriving there in a severe shivering fit with a bad headache and every symptom of ague, I was indeed ill and played out. I had taken double doses of life and literature, had swallowed all the chief French writers from Rabelais and Montaigne to Flaubert, Zola and Balzac, passing by Pascal and Vauvenargues, Renan and Hugo-a glutton's feast for six months. Then, too, I had nosed out this artist's studio and that, had spent hours watching Rodin at work and more hours comparing this painter's model with that, these breasts and hips with those. My love of plastic beauty nearly brought me to grief at least once, and perhaps I had better record the incident, though it rather hurt my vanity at the time. One day I called at Manet's old studio, which was rented now by an American painter named Alexander. He had real power as a craftsman, but only a moderate brain and was always trying by beauty or something remarkable in his model to make up for his own want of originality. On this visit I noticed an extraordinary sketch of a young girl standing where childhood and womanhood meet: she had cut her hair short and her chestnut-dark eyes lent her a startling distinction. «You like it?» asked Alexander.
«She has the most perfect figure I have ever seen.» «I like it,»
I replied. «I wonder whether the magic is in the model or in your brush?» «You'll soon see,» he retorted, a little piqued. «She's due here already,» and almost as he spoke, she came in with quick, alert steps. She was below medium height, but evidently already a woman. Without a word she went behind the screen to undress, when Alexander said, «Well?» I had to think a moment or two before answering. «God and you have conspired together!» I exclaimed, and indeed his brush had surpassed itself. He had caught and rendered a childish innocence in expression that I had not remarked, and he had blocked in the features with superb brio. «It is your best work to date,» I went on, «and almost anyone would have signed it.» At this moment the model emerged with a sheet about her, and probably because of my praise, Alexander introduced me to Mile. Jeanne and said I was a distinguished American writer. She nodded to me saucily, flashing white teeth at me, mounted the estrade, threw off the sheet and took up her pose-all in a moment. I was carried off my feet; the more I looked, the more perfections I discovered. Needless to say, I told her so in my best French, with a hundred similes. Alexander also I conciliated by begging him to do no more to the sketch but sell it to me and do another. Finally he took four hundred and fifty francs for it and in an hour had made another sketch. My purchase had convinced Mile. Jeanne that I was a young millionaire, and when I asked her if I might accompany her to her home, she consented more than readily. As a matter of fact, I took her for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne and from there to dinner in a private room at the Cafe Anglais. During the meal I had got to like her: she lived with her mother, Alexander had told me; though by no means prudish, still less virginal, she was not a coureuse. I thought I might risk connection; but when I got her to take off her clothes and began to caress her sex, she drew away and said quite as a matter of course: «Why not faire minette?» When I asked her what she meant, she told me frankly: «We women do not get excited in a moment as you men do; why not kiss me and tongue me there for a few minutes, then I shall have enjoyed myself and shall be ready.» I'm afraid I made rather a face, for she remarked coolly: «Just as you like, you know. I prefer in a meal the hors-d'oeuvres to the piece de resistance like a good many other women: indeed, I often content myself with the hors-d'oeuvres and don't take any more. Surely you understand that a woman goes on getting more and more excited for an hour or two and no man is capable of bringing her to the highest pitch of enjoyment while pleasing himself.» «I'm able,» I said stubbornly. «I can go on all night if you please me, so we should skip appetizers.» «No, no!» she replied, laughing, «let us have a banquet then, but begin with the lips and tongue!» The delay, the bandying to and fro of argument, and above all the idea of kissing and tonguing her sex, had brought me to coolness and reason. Was I not just as foolish as Bancroft if I yielded to her-an unknown girl? I replied finally,
«No, little lady, your charms are not for me,» and I took my seat again at the table and poured myself out some wine. I had the ordinary English or American youth's repugnance to what seemed like degradation, never guessing that Jeanne was giving me the second lesson m the noble art of seduction, of which my sister had taught me long ago the rudiments. The next time I was offered minette I had grown wiser and made no scruples, but that's another story. The fact is that my first visit to Paris I kept perfectly chaste, thanks in part to the example of Ned's blunder; thinks, too, to my dislike of going with any girl sexually whom I didn't really care for, and I didn't care for Jeanne. She was too imperious, and imperiousness in a girl is the quality I most dislike, perhaps because I suffer from an overdose of the humor. At any rate, it was not sexual indulgence that broke my health in Paris, but my passionate desire to learn that had cut down my hours of sleep and exasperated my nerves. I took cold and had a dreadful recurrence of malaria. I wanted rest and time to breathe and think. The little house in a side street in the lovely Welsh watering-place was exactly the haven of rest I needed. I soon got well and strong and for the first time learned to know my father. He came for long walks with me, though he was over sixty.
After his terrible accident seven years before (he slipped and fell thirty feet into a drydock while his ship was being repaired), one side of his hair and moustache had turned white and the other remained jet-black. I was
