he room, that I would return to
the beaux arts no more. I felt humiliated at my own weakness, for much hope
had been centred in that academy; and I knew no other. Day after day I
walked up and down the Boulevards, studying the photographs of the
_salon_ pictures, and was stricken by the art of Jules Lefevre. True
it is that I saw it was wanting in that tender grace which I am forced to
admit even now, saturated though I now am with the aesthetics of different
schools, is inherent in Cabanel's work; but at the time I am writing of, my
nature was too young and mobile to resist the conventional attractiveness
of nude figures, indolent attitudes, long hair, slender hips and hands, and
I accepted Jules Lefevre wholly and unconditionally. He hesitated, however,
when I asked to be taken as a private pupil, but he wrote out the address
of a studio where he gave instruction every Tuesday morning. This was even
more to my taste, for I had an instinctive liking for Frenchmen, and was
anxious to see as much of them as possible.

The studio was perched high up in the Passage des Panoramas. There I found
M. Julien, a typical meridional--the large stomach, the dark eyes, crafty
and watchful; the seductively mendacious manner, the sensual mind. We made
friends at once--he consciously making use of me, I unconsciously making
use of him. To him my forty francs, a month's subscription, were a godsend,
nor were my invitations to dinner and to the theatre to be disdained. I was
curious, odd, quaint. To be sure, it was a little tiresome to have to put
up with a talkative person, whose knowledge of the French language had been
acquired in three months, but the dinners were good. No doubt Julien
reasoned so; I did not reason at all. I felt this crafty, clever man of the
world was necessary to me. I had never met such a man before, and all my
curiosity was awake. He spoke of art and literature, of the world and the
flesh; he told me of the books he had read, he narrated thrilling incidents
in his own life; and the moral reflections with which he sprinkled his
conversation I thought very striking. Like every young man of twenty, I was
on the look-out for something to set up that would do duty for an ideal.
The world was to me, at this time, what a toy shop had been fifteen years
before: everything was spick and span, and every illusion was set out
straight and smart in new paint and gilding. But Julien kept me at a
distance, and the rare occasions