him that the doctor had forbidden me to listen to the harp, as it
was bad for my nerves. His figure as I saw him for the last time
remains impressed on my memory, like an apparition from the world
of Hoffmann's fairy-tales. In the late autumn, when we were going
back to Paris, he asked us to take with us on our furniture van
an enormous stove-pipe, of which he promised to relieve us
shortly. One very cold day Jadin actually presented himself at
our new abode in Paris, in a most preposterous costume of his own
manufacture, consisting of very thin light-yellow trousers, a
very short pale-green dress-coat with conspicuously long tails,
projecting lace shirt frills and cuffs, a very fair wig, and a
hat so small that it was constantly dropping off; he wore in
addition a quantity of imitation jewellery--and all this on the
undisguised assumption that he could not go about in fashionable
Paris dressed as simply as in the country. He had come for the
stove-pipe; we asked him where the men to carry it were; in reply
he simply smiled, and expressed his surprise at our helplessness;
and thereupon took the enormous stove-pipe under his arm and
absolutely refused to accept our help when we offered to assist
him in carrying it down the stairs, though this operation,
notwithstanding his vaunted skill, occupied him quite half an
hour. Every one in the house assembled to witness this removal,
but he was by no means disconcerted, and managed to get the pipe
through the street door, and then tripped gracefully along the
pavement with it, and disappeared from our sight.

For this short though eventful period, during which I was quite
free to give full scope to my inmost thoughts, I indulged in the
consolation of purely artistic creations. I can only say that,
when it came to an end, I had made such progress that I could