“What papers are they?” cried I.

“San Francisco papers,” said he.  “He gets a bale of them about twice a week, and studies them like the Bible.  That’s one of his weaknesses; another is to be incalculably rich.  He has taken Masson’s old studio—­you remember?—­at the corner of the road; he has furnished it regardless of expense, and lives there surrounded with vins fins and works of art.  When the youth of to-day goes up to the Caverne des Brigands to make punch—­they do all that we did, like some nauseous form of ape (I never appreciated before what a creature of tradition mankind is)—­this Madden follows with a basket of champagne.  I told him he was wrong, and the punch tasted better; but he thought the boys liked the style of the thing, and I suppose they do.  He is a very good-natured soul, and a very melancholy, and rather a helpless.  O, and he has a third weakness which I came near forgetting.  He paints.  He has never been taught, and he’s past thirty, and he paints.”

“How?” I asked.

“Rather well, I think,” was the reply.  “That’s the annoying part of it.  See for yourself.  That panel is his.”

I stepped toward the window.  It was the old familiar room, with the tables set like a Greek P, and the sideboard, and the aphasiac piano, and the panels on the wall.  There were Romeo and Juliet, Antwerp from the river, Enfield’s ships among the ice, and the huge huntsman winding a huge horn; mingled with them a few new ones, the thin crop of a succeeding generation, not better and not worse.  It was to one of these I was directed; a thing coarsely and wittily handled, mostly with the palette-knife, the colour in some parts excellent, the canvas in others loaded with mere clay.  But it was the scene, and not the art or want of it, that riveted my notice.  The foreground was of sand and scrub and wreckwood; in the middle distance the many-hued and smooth expanse of a lagoon, enclosed by a wall of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean.  The sky was cloudless, and I could hear the surf break.  For the place was Midway Island; the point of view the very spot at which I had landed with the captain for the first time, and from which I had re-embarked the day before we sailed.  I had already been gazing for some seconds, before my attention was arrested by a blur on the sea-line; and stooping to look, I recognised the smoke of a steamer.

“Yes,” said I, turning toward Stennis, “it has merit.  What is it?”

“A fancy piece,” he returned.  “That’s what pleased me.  So few of the fellows in our time had the imagination of a garden snail.”

“Madden, you say his name is?” I pursued.

“Madden,” he repeated.

“Has he travelled much?” I inquired.

“I haven’t an idea.  He is one of the least autobiographical of men.  He sits, and smokes, and giggles, and sometimes he makes small jests; but his contributions to the art of pleasing are generally confined to looking like a gentleman and being one.  No,” added Stennis, “he’ll never suit you, Dodd; you like more head on your liquor.  You’ll find him as dull as ditch water.”