Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/59

Rh him much—rendered him perhaps even morbidly sensitive—to impressions of this order; the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentive study of beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curious research and experiment, had produced in his mind a new sense, the exercise of which was a conscious enjoyment, and the supreme gratification of which, on several occasions, had given him as many ineffaceable memories. He had once said to his friend Waterlow: "I don't know whether it's a confession of a very poor life, but the most important things that have happened to me in this world have been simply half-a-dozen impressions—impressions of the eye." "Ah, malheureux, you're lost!" the painter had exclaimed, in answer to this, and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech. Gaston Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continued to be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature (with culture added), enabled him to carry in his brain. The impression of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through one's fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave it and that nothing could take it away. He had perceived in a moment that Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he felt that she conferred it in a degree which made