this hour.  “Corporal John” (as we used to call him) breaking for once those habits of study and reserve which have since carried him so high in the opinion of the world, had left his easel of a morning to countenance a fellow-countryman in some suspense.  My dear old Romney was there by particular request; for who that knew him would think a pleasure quite complete unless he shared it, or not support a mortification more easily if he were present to console?  The party was completed by John Myner, the Englishman; by the brothers Stennis,—­Stennis-aine and Stennis-frere, as they used to figure on their accounts at Barbizon—­a pair of hare-brained Scots; and by the inevitable Jim, as white as a sheet and bedewed with the sweat of anxiety.

I suppose I was little better myself when I unveiled the Genius of Muskegon.  The master walked about it seriously; then he smiled.

“It is already not so bad,” said he, in that funny English of which he was so proud.  “No, already not so bad.”

We all drew a deep breath of relief; and Corporal John (as the most considerable junior present) explained to him it was intended for a public building, a kind of prefecture—­

“He!  Quoi?” cried he, relapsing into French.  “Qu’est-ce que vous me chantez la?  O, in America,” he added, on further information being hastily furnished.  “That is anozer sing.  O, very good, very good.”

The idea of the required certificate had to be introduced to his mind in the light of a pleasantry—­the fancy of a nabob little more advanced than the red Indians of “Fennimore Cooperr”; and it took all our talents combined to conceive a form of words that would be acceptable on both sides.  One was found, however:  Corporal John engrossed it in his undecipherable hand, the master lent it the sanction of his name and flourish, I slipped it into an envelope along with one of the two letters I had ready prepared in my pocket, and as the rest of us moved off along the boulevard to breakfast, Pinkerton was detached in a cab and duly committed it to the post.

The breakfast was ordered at Lavenue’s, where no one need be ashamed to entertain even the master; the table was laid in the garden; I had chosen the bill of fare myself; on the wine question we held a council of war with the most fortunate results; and the talk, as soon as the master laid aside his painful English, became fast and furious.  There were a few interruptions, indeed, in the way of toasts.  The master’s health had to be drunk, and he responded in a little well-turned speech, full of neat allusions to my future and to the United States; my health followed; and then my father’s must not only be proposed and drunk, but a full report must be despatched to him at once by cablegram—­an extravagance which was almost the means of the master’s dissolution.  Choosing Corporal John to be his confidant (on the ground, I presume, that he was already too good an artist to be any longer an American except in name) he summed up his amazement in one oft-repeated formula—­“C’est barbare!” Apart from these genial formalities, we talked, talked of art, and talked of it as only artists can.  Here in the South Seas we talk schooners most of the time; in the Quarter we talked art with the like unflagging interest, and perhaps as much result.