seen me yesterday he said, "_Tiens! c'est vous; une demi-tasse?
oui...garçon, une demi-tasse_." Presently the conversation turned on
Marshall; they had not seen much of him lately. "_Il parait qu'il est
plus amoureux que jamais_," Julien replied sardonically.




V


I found my friend in large furnished apartments on the ground floor in
the Rue Duphot. The walls were stretched with blue silk, there were
large mirrors and great gilt cornices. Passing into the bedroom I found
the young god wallowing in the finest of fine linen--in a great Louis
XV. bed, and there were cupids above him. "Holloa! what, you back again,
George Moore? we thought we weren't going to see you again."

"It's nearly one o'clock; get up. What's the news?"

"To-day is the opening of the exhibition of the Impressionists. We'll
have a bit of breakfast round the corner, at Durant's, and we'll go on
there. I hear that Bedlam is nothing to it; there is a canvas there
twenty feet square and in three tints: pale yellow for the sunlight,
brown for the shadows, and all the rest is sky-blue. There is, I am
told, a lady walking in the foreground with a ring-tailed monkey, and
the tail is said to be three yards long."

We went to jeer a group of enthusiasts that willingly forfeit all
delights of the world in the hope of realising a new æstheticism; we