from Paris I had but one missive from him, a short note, written at the
request of his sister, asking me to be on the lookout for Italian
earrings, to add to her collection of old jewels. So, from time to time,
I sent her what I could find about Capri or in Naples, and she responded
with neat little letters of acknowledgment.

Two years I stayed on Capri, eating the lotus which grows on that happy
island, and painting very little--only enough, indeed, to be remembered
at the Salon and not so much as knowing how kindly or unkindly they hung
my pictures there. But even on Capri, people sometimes hear the call of
Paris and wish to be in that unending movement: to hear the
multitudinous rumble, to watch the procession from a cafe terrace and to
dine at Foyot's. So there came at last a fine day when I, knowing that
the horse-chestnuts were in bloom along the Champs Elysees, threw my
rope-soled shoes to a beggar, packed a rusty trunk, and was off for the
banks of the Seine.

My arrival--just the drive from the Gare de Lyon to my studio--was like
the shock of surf on a bather's breast.

The stir and life, the cheerful energy of the streets, put stir and life
and cheerful energy into me. I felt the itch to work again, to be at it,
at it in earnest--to lose no hour of daylight, and to paint better than
I had painted!

Paris having given me this impetus, I dared not tempt her further, nor
allow the edge of my eagerness time to blunt; therefore, at the end of a
fortnight, I went over into Normandy and deposited that rusty trunk of
mine in a corner of the summer pavilion in the courtyard of Madame
Brossard's inn, Les Trois Pigeons, in a woodland neighborhood that is