Confessions of a Young Man | Page 8

lady next me if she knew who he was. She
could give me no information. But at four o'clock there was a general
exodus from the studio, and we adjourned to a neighbouring café to
drink beer. The way led through a narrow passage, and as we stooped
under an archway, the young man (Marshall was his name) spoke to me
in English. Yes, we had met before; we had exchanged a few words in
So-and-So's studio--the great blonde man, whose Doré-like
improvisations had awakened aspiration in me.
The usual reflections on the chances of life were of course made, and
then followed the inevitable "Will you dine with me to-night?"
Marshall thought the following day would suit him better, but I was
very pressing. He offered to meet me at my hotel; or would I come with
him to his rooms, and he would show me some pictures--some trifles
he had brought up from the country? Nothing would please me better.
We got into a cab. Then every moment revealed new qualities, new
superiorities, in my new-found friend. Not only was he tall, strong,
handsome, and beautifully dressed, infinitely better dressed than I, but
he could talk French like a native. It was only natural that he should,
for he was born and had lived in Brussels all his life, but the accident of

birth rather stimulated than calmed my erubescent admiration. He
spoke of, and he was clearly on familiar terms with, the fashionable
restaurants and actresses; he stopped at a hairdresser's to have his hair
curled. All this was very exciting, and a little bewildering. I was on the
tiptoe of expectation to see his apartments; and, not to be utterly
outdone, I alluded to my valet.
His apartments were not so grand as I expected; but when he explained
that he had just spent ten thousand pounds in two years, and was now
living on six or seven hundred francs a month, which his mother would
allow him until he had painted and had sold a certain series of pictures,
which he contemplated beginning at once, my admiration increased to
wonder, and I examined with awe the great fireplace which had been
constructed at his orders, and admired the iron pot which hung by a
chain above an artificial bivouac fire. This detail will suggest the rest of
the studio--the Turkey carpet, the brass harem lamps, the Japanese
screen, the pieces of drapery, the oak chairs covered with red Utrecht
velvet, the oak wardrobe that had been picked up somewhere,--a
ridiculous bargain, and the inevitable bed with spiral columns. There
were vases filled with foreign grasses, and palms stood in the corners of
the rooms. Marshall pulled out a few pictures; but he paid very little
heed to my compliments; and, sitting down at the piano, with a great
deal of splashing and dashing about the keys, he rattled off a waltz.
"What waltz is that?" I asked.
"Oh, nothing; something I composed the other evening. I had a fit of
the blues, and didn't go out. What do you think of it?"
"I think it beautiful; did you really compose that the other evening?"
At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and a beautiful English
girl entered. Marshall introduced me. With looks that see nothing, and
words that mean nothing, an amorous woman receives the man she
finds with her sweetheart. But it subsequently transpired that Alice had
an appointment, that she was dining out. She would, however, call in
the morning, and give him a sitting for the portrait he was painting of
her.

I had hitherto worked very regularly and attentively at the studio, but
now Marshall's society was an attraction I could not resist. For the sake
of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was so idle;
but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough, and his
gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience opened to
me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life. On my arrival in
Paris I had visited, in the company of my taciturn valet, the Mabille and
the Valentino, and I had dined at the Maison d'Or by myself; but now I
was taken to strange students' cafés, where dinners were paid for in
pictures; to a mysterious place, where a table d'hôte was held under a
tent in a back garden; and afterwards we went in great crowds to
Bullier, the Château Rouge, or the Élysée Montmartre. The clangour of
the band, the unreal greenness of the foliage, the thronging of the
dancers, and the chattering of women, whose Christian names we only
knew. And then the returning in open carriages rolling through the
white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer night,