deferred; Giant Despair was my constant bed-fellow.'

'But--with your connections--' I began.

'Oh, my connections!' he cried. 'There was the rub. London is the
cruellest town in Europe. For sheer cold blood and heartlessness give
Londoners the palm. I had connections enough for the first month or
so, and then people found out things that didn't concern them. They
found out some things that were true, and they imagined other things
that were false. They wouldn't have my wife; they told the most
infamous lies about her; and I wouldn't have _them_. Could I be civil
to people who insulted and slandered _her_? I had no connections in
London, except with the underworld. I got down to copying parts for
theatrical orchestras; and working twelve hours a day, earned about
thirty shillings a week.'

'You might have come back to Paris.'

'And fared worse. I couldn't have earned thirty pence in Paris. Mind
you, the only trade I had learned was that of a musical composer; and
I couldn't compose music that people would buy. I should have starved
as a copyist in Paris, where copyists are more numerous and worse
paid. Teach there? But to one competent master of harmony in London
there are ten in Paris. No; it was a hopeless case.'

'It is incomprehensible--incomprehensible,' said I.

'But wait--wait till you've heard the end. One would think I had had
enough--not so? One would think my cup of bitterness was full. No
fear! There was a stronger cup still a-brewing for me. When Fortune