Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/113

Rh frozen, and there is nothing left to feel. His third subject was the frivolity of Paris, of which we knew everything by hearsay and nothing by experience, so were able to discuss with a "wet sheet and a flowing sea," so to speak. He hated Paris, and he hated frivolity, even as he hated French. Our conversations, I ought to say, were carried on in German, which we spoke with almost a common measure of inaccuracy; and I think that he probably knew as little of the French language as he knew of the frivolity of Paris.

I tried to encourage him to take long walks and long tours on tramways it should never be forgotten that you can go all over Paris for threepence—and when his work at the studio was sufficiently discouraging he would do so, sometimes coming with me, sometimes going alone. We explored Montmartre together, both by day and gas light; we fared forth to the Abattoirs, to the Place de la Roquette, to the Boulevard Beaumarchais and the Boulevard Port Royal, the Temple and "les Halles."

But Wladislaw was alone the day he set out to inspect the Bois de Boulogne, the Pare Monceau, the Madeleine, and the grands Boulevards.

I remember seeing him start. If he had been coming with me he would have had on a tie and collar (borrowed from another student) and his other coat; he would, in fact, have done his best to look ordinary, to rob himself, in his youthful pride and ignorant vanity, of his picturesque appearance. I am sorry to say it, since he was an artist; but it is true—he would.

As it was, he sallied out in the grey woollen shirt, with its low collar, the half-buttoned waistcoat, the old, blue, sloppily-hanging coat, with one sleeve obstinately burst at the back, and the close astrakhan cap on one side of his smooth straight hazel hair. When I ran across him next day in the neighbourhood of