he had won them; then he started for Paris with
fifty pounds in his pocket, and a resolve in his heart that he would
live for a year and pay his fees out of this sum of money. Those were
hard days, but they were likewise great days. He had been talking to
Harding about those days in Paris the night before last, and he had
told him of the room at the top of the house for which he paid thirty
francs a month. There was a policeman on one side and there was a
footman on the other. It was a bare little room, and he lived
principally on bread. In those days his only regret was that he had not
the necessary threepence to go to the cafe. "One can't go to the cafe
without threepence to pay for the harmless bock, and if one has
threepence one can sit in the cafe discussing Carpeaux, Rodin, and the
mysteries, until two in the morning, when one is at last ejected by an
exhausted proprietor at the head of numerous waiters."

Rodney's resolutions were not broken; he had managed to live for nearly
a year in Paris upon fifty pounds, and when he came to the end of his
money he went to London in search of work. He found himself in London
with two pounds, but he had got work from a sculptor, a pupil of
Dalous: "a clever man," Rodney said, "a good sculptor; it is a pity he
died." At this time Garvier was in fairly good health and had plenty of
orders, and besides Rodney he employed three Italian carvers, and from
these Italians Rodney learned Italian, and he spent two years in London
earning three pounds a week. But the time came when the sculptor had no
more work for Rodney, and one day he told him that he would not require
him that week, there was no work for him, nor was there the next week
or the next, and Rodney kicked his heels and pondered Elgin marbles for
a month. Then he got a letter from the sculptor saying he had some work
for him to do; and it was a good job of work, and Rodney remained with
Garvier for two months, knowing very well that his three pounds a week
was precarious fortune. Some time after, the sculptor's health began to
fail him and he had to leave London. Rodney received news of his death
two years afterwards. He was then teaching sculpture in the art schools
of Northampton, and he wondered whether, if Garvier had lived, he would
have succeeded in doing better work than he had done.

From Northampton he went to Edinburgh, he wandered even as far as
Inverness. From Inverness he had been called back to Dublin, and f