Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/119

Rh of the packet in which he bought his tobacco. A careful observer might have accurately dated the arrival of his funds by noting the orange paper which inclosed his "Levant Supérieur." Then, as it behoved him to be careful, the canary yellow of the cheaper "Levant"; and finally the sign manual of approaching destitution in the common brown wrapper of his "Caporal." I am inclined to say that I noticed his leisurely but inevitable descent of these pecuniary steps every month.

Further, if moderately affluent, he would indulge in five sous' worth of roasted chestnuts whenever we went out together, and only on one occasion did it occur to me to provide him with a tram fare. Despite this poverty, I am very sure that when he arranged ultimately, at my instance, to sit to Monsieur Dufour for his picture of "Christ led up into the Wilderness to be tempted of the Devil," Wladislaw was very far from thinking of the remuneration.

The fact was, he had differed rather pointedly with a big Russian at the evening class, a man preternaturally irritable because eternally afflicted by the toothache; there had been words, the Russian had announced his intention of throwing the Pole from the top of the stairs, and being a taller, more muscular fellow, had picked him up and carried him to the door, when Wladislaw wriggled dexterously from his grasp, and jerked him down no fewer than eleven steps upon his spine. He described to me afterwards with less truth than artistic sympathy the neat bobbing sound as each individual vertebra knocked upon the wooden stairs.

This incident, and the fact that the Russian had taken an oath in public to pay his defeat a round dozen of times, served to cool Wladislaw's interest in the evening class. He told me also that the light tried his eyes; and he would come up in the morning