Engin is not far from Paris, and the French country seemed to me like a
fairy-book. Tall green poplars and green river banks, and a little lake
reflecting the foliage and the stems of sapling oak and pine, just as in
the pictures. The driver pointed with his whip, and I saw a high garden
wall shadowed with young trees, and a tall loose iron gate. As I walked
up the gravel path I looked for the beautiful mistress, who, dressed in
muslin, with sleeves open at the elbow, should feed pigeons from a
silver plate of Venus and the does. M. Sevres caught me looking at it;
and hoping his mistress might appear I prolonged the conversation till a
tardy sense of the value of his time forced me to bring it to a close;
and as I passed down the green garden with him I scanned hopefully every
nook, fancying I should see her reading, and that she would raise her
eyes as I passed.

Looking back through the years it seems to me that I did catch sight of
a white dress behind a trellis. But that dress might have been his
daughter's, even his wife's. I only know that I did not discover M.
Sevres's mistress that day nor any other day. I never saw him again. Now
the earth is over him, as Rossetti would say, and all the reveries that
the photographs had inspired resulted in nothing, mere childish
sensualities.

I returned to Engin with my taciturn valet; but he showed no enthusiasm
on the subject of Engin. I saw he was sighing after beef, beer and a
wife, and was but little disposed to settle in this French suburb. We
were both very much alone in Paris. In the evenings I allowed him to
smoke his clay in my room, and in an astounding brogue he counselled me
to return to my mother. But I would not listen, and one day on the
Boulevards I was stricken with the art of Jules Lefebvre. True it is
that I saw it was wanting in that tender grace which I am forced to