I know it well,
who have been myself taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on the
strength of the misapprehension. Once M. de Vauversin visited a
commissary of police for permission to sing. The commissary, who was
smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance.
"Mr. Commissary," he began, "I am an artist." And on went the
commissary's hat again. No courtesy for the companions of Apollo! "They
are as degraded as that," said M. de Vauversin, with a sweep of his
cigarette.

But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we had been
talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and pinchings of his
wandering life. Someone said, it would be better to have a million of
money down, and Mlle. Ferrario admitted that she would prefer that
mightily. "_Eh bien, moi non_;--not I," cried De Vauversin, striking the
table with his hand. "If anyone is a failure in the world, is it not I?
I had an art, in which I have done things well--as well as some--better
perhaps than others; and now it is closed against me. I must go about
the country gathering coppers and singing nonsense. Do you think I
regret my life? Do you think I would rather be a fat burgess, like a
calf? Not I! I have had moments when I have been applauded on the
boards: I think nothing of that; but I have known in my own mind
sometimes, when I had not a clap from the whole house, that I had found
a true intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then,
messieurs, I have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing
well, what it was to be an artist. And to know what art is, is to have
an interest for ever, such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns.
_Tenez, messieurs, je vais vous le dire_--it is like a religion."

Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and the
inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of faith of M. de
Vauversin. I have given him his own name, lest any other wanderer should
come across him, with his guitar and cigarette, and Mademoiselle
Ferrario; for should not all the world delight to honour this
unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses? May Apollo send him rhymes
hitherto undreamed of; may the river be no longer scanty of her silver
fishes to his lure; may the cold not pinch him on long winter rides, nor
the village jack-in-office affront him with unseemly manners; and may he
never miss Mademoiselle Ferrario from his side, to follow with his
dutiful eyes and accompany