ar sights contributing to flout his
own unhappiness, want, and isolation. At the same time, if he be at all
after my pattern, he is perhaps supported by a childish satisfaction.
"This is life at last," he may tell himself; "this is the real thing.
The bladders on which I was set swimming are now empty; my own weight
depends upon the ocean; by my own exertions I must perish or succeed;
and I am now enduring, in the vivid fact, what I so much delighted to
read of in the case of Lousteau or Lucien, Rodolphe or Schaunard."

Of the steps of my misery I cannot tell at length. In ordinary times
what were politically called "loans" (although they were never meant to
be repaid) were matters of constant course among the students, and many
a man has partly lived on them for years. But my misfortune befell me
at an awkward juncture. Many of my friends were gone; others were
themselves in a precarious situation. Romney (for instance) was reduced
to tramping Paris in a pair of country sabots, his only suit of clothes
so imperfect (in spite of cunningly-adjusted pins) that the authorities
at the Luxembourg suggested his withdrawal from the gallery. Dijon, too,
was on a lee-shore, designing clocks and gas-brackets for a dealer; and
the most he could do was to offer me a corner of his studio where I
might work. My own studio (it will be gathered) I had by that time lost;
and in the course of my expulsion the Genius of Muskegon was finally
separated from her author. To continue to possess a full-sized statue, a
man must have a studio, a gallery, or at least the freedom of a
back-garden. He cannot carry it about with him, like a satchel, in the
bottom of a cab, nor can he cohabit in a garret ten by fifteen with so
momentous a companion. It was my first idea to leave her behind at my
departure. There, in her birthplace, she might lend an inspiration,
methought, to my successor. But the proprietor, with whom I had
unhappily quarrelled, seized the occasion to be disagreeable, and called
upon me to remove my property. For a man in such straits as I now found
myself, the hire of a lorry was a consideration; and yet even that I
could have faced, if I had had anywhere to drive to after it was hired.
Hysterical laughter seized upon me as I beheld (in imagination) myself,
the waggoner, and the Genius of Muskegon, standing in the public view of
Paris, without the shadow of a destination; perhaps driving at last to
the nearest rubbish-heap, and dumpi