20th.'

'But what can you hope to learn of Latin Quarter customs in a
fortnight? One ought to live here for a year, at the very least,
before attempting to write us up.'

'Ah,' he rejoined, shaking his head and gazing dreamily at something
invisible beyond the smoky atmosphere of the cafe, 'a man with
dramatic insight can learn as much in a fortnight as an ordinary
person in half a lifetime. Intuition and inspiration take the place of
the note-book and the yard-stick. The author of _The Merchant of
Venice_ had never visited Italy. In "Crispin Dorr" I have described a
tempest and a shipwreck at which old sailors shudder: and my longest
voyage has been from Holyhead to Kingstown. Besides,' he added, with a
bow and smile, 'for the Latin Quarter, if you will take me under your
protection, I shall, I am sure, benefit by the services of a capital
cicerone.'

And the next afternoon he arrived. I met him at the threshold of the
hotel, introduced him to our landlady, Madame Pamparagoux (who stared
rather wildly, not being accustomed to see her lodgers so mediaevally
attired), and showed him upstairs to the room I had engaged.

There he invited me to be seated while he unpacked his portmanteau and
put his things in order. These, I noticed, were un-Britishly few and
simple. I could discern no vestiges of either sponge or tub. As he
moved backwards and forwards between his chest of drawers and
dressing-table, he would cast frequent affectionate glances at his
double, now in the glass of the _armoire_, now in that above the
chimney. He was favouring me meantime with a running monologue of an
autobiographical complexion.

'I am a self-educated man. My father was a wine merchant in Leeds. At
sixteen he put me to serve in the shop of a cousin, a print-seller. It
was there, I think, that my literary instincts awoke. I contributed
occasional art notes to a local paper. At twenty I came up to London
and began my definite career, as a reporter. I was soon earning thirty
shillings a week, which seemed to me magnificent. But I aspired to
higher things. I felt within me the stirrings of what I could not help
believing to be genius--true genius. I longed to distinguish myself,
to emerge from the crowd, from the background, to make myself
remarked, to do something, to be somebody, to see my name a famous
one. I was fortunate enough at this epoch to attract the notice of
X----, the poet. He believed in me, and encouraged me to believe in