Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/158



''I suspected it at the time; and now my uprooted hairs are beglooming the pink geraniums below my window. I have taken my oath; and now you and I are pledged: no French, you; no Greek or Latin, I. It may be all for the best.''

And arma virusqus cano would have sounded so much better!

Returning to the subject of French Illustration, he adds, 28. 11. 20:

''It's the knock-about, rough-and-tumble, café life in Paris I expect, that accounts for the greater success of the French illustrators. They all of them meet all the authors in the great Bourse à poignées de main that are the Paris coffee-houses. The subjects are discussed over a thousand books; and the draughtsman is not overpaid What I'm "after" is this, that the British illustrators, sitting at home in their neatly-swept fiats or studios, decorated mainly with Japanese fans, furnished with wives instead of mistresses, that these smug dogs, with their pappy brains, cannot turn out such good work or enter so well into the spirit of things, as the Frenchman. And, if all this sounds damned immoral, I can't help it.''

The shadow of Christmas fell across Teix