my Whistler nights, the background now not our
chambers, but the memorable apartment in the Rue du Bac
_rez-de-chaussee_ opening upon the spacious garden where, in the
twilight, often we lingered to listen to the Missionary Monks in their
spacious garden on the other side of the wall, singing the canticles for
the Month of Mary so dear to me from my convent days--nights in the
dining-room with its beautiful blue-and-white china, the long table and
the Japanese "something like a birdcage" hanging over it in the centre,
many once-friendly faces all about me, Whistler presiding in his place
or filling the glasses of his guests as he passed from one to the other,
always talking, saying things as nobody else could have said them,
witty, serious, exasperating, delightful things, laughing the gay laugh
or the laugh of malice that said as much as his words;--nights in the
blue and white drawing-room, with the painting of Venus over the mantel,
and the stately Empire chairs, and the table a litter of papers among
which was always the last correspondence to be read, interrupted by his
own comments that to those who heard were the best part of it--nights
that will never perish as long as even one man, or woman, who shared in
them lives to remember;--Whistler nights even after Whistler had left us
for the land where there is neither night nor day: nights these with the
old friends who had loved him, with the painter Oulevey and the sculptor
Drouet who had been his fellow students, with Theodore Duret who had
been faithful during his years of greatest trial, friends who rejoiced
in talking of Whistler and of all that had gone to make him the great
personality and the greater artist; but of the Whistler nights in Paris,
as in London, I have already made the record with J. The story of them
is told.

And along the same rich Corridors, I would come to nights only less
worth preserving in the studios of artists, American and English, who
studied and worked and lived in Paris--nights that have bequeathed to me
the impression of great space, and lofty ceilings, and many canvases,
and big easels, and bits of tapestry, and the gleam of old brass and
pottery, and excellent dinners, and, of course, vehement talk, and a
friendly war of words--nights with men irrevocably in the movement,
whose work was conspicuous on the walls of the New _Salon_ and had
probably, a few hours earlier, kept us busy arguing in front of it and
writing voluminous no