r in an
age of dinginess--why, the point, nowadays, is to avoid colour, and in a
whole Academy you shall scarcely find as much as would tint a stick of
sealing-wax.

"You put on a black coat and go into society"--that is the secret of
commissions, and commissions are fortune. Nothing so clever in the way
of advice has been sent forth as that remark. The great Tichborne said
something about folk that had money and no brains, and folk that had
brains but no money; and they as has no brains ought to be so managed as
to supply money to those who had. But even the greatness of the great
Tichborne's observation falls into insignificance before Chesterfield in
one sentence: "Put on a black coat and go into society."

What are the sayings of the seven wise men of Greece compared to
_that_?

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXVII.

BY no possible means could Alere Flamma work himself into a dress coat.
The clubs, the houses of the great, the mutual admiration dinners--those
great institutions of the day--were all closed to him because of the
Dress Coat.

If he had really desired to enter, of course he would have squeezed into
the evening monkey-skin somehow; but, in truth, Alere did not want to
enter.

Inside he might have finished a portrait a month at a thousand
guineas--twelve portraits per annum equals twelve thousand guineas a
year; you see I am looking up the multiplication table, preparatory to
going into the tallow trade.

What he actually did was to make designs for book-covers--magnificent
book-covers that will one day fetch their weight in bank-notes--manipulating
a good deal of it himself--"tooling"--for the libraries of noble
connoisseurs. They were equal to anything ever done in Paris.

For a week's work--say half-an-hour a day--he got perhaps about ten
pounds. With the ten pounds he was satisfied--ten pounds represents a
good deal of brandy, or stout, or even wine, about as much as one man
can manage at a bout; besides tobacco, the gallery at the theatre, and
innumerable trifles of that kind. Ten pounds represents a good deal of
street life.

Sometimes he drew--and engraved--illustrations for books, being as
clever with the engraver's tools as with the pencil; sometimes he cut
out those odd, fantastic "initials," "ornaments," "finials," which are
now so commonly seen in publications, catching the classical grotesque
of the Renaissance to perfection, and deceiving the experienced;
sometimes he wor