“Let me say it out!” he cried.  “I revere you for your whole-souled devotion to art; I can’t rise to it, but there’s a strain of poetry in my nature, Loudon, that responds to it.  I want you to carry it out, and I mean to help you.”

“Pinkerton, what nonsense is this?” I interrupted.

“Now don’t get mad, Loudon; this is a plain piece of business,” said he; “it’s done every day; it’s even typical.  How are all those fellows over here in Paris, Henderson, Sumner, Long?—­it’s all the same story:  a young man just plum full of artistic genius on the one side, a man of business on the other who doesn’t know what to do with his dollars—­”

“But, you fool, you’re as poor as a rat,” I cried.

“You wait till I get my irons in the fire!” returned Pinkerton.  “I’m bound to be rich; and I tell you I mean to have some of the fun as I go along.  Here’s your first allowance; take it at the hand of a friend; I’m one that holds friendship sacred as you do yourself.  It’s only a hundred francs; you’ll get the same every month, and as soon as my business begins to expand we’ll increase it to something fitting.  And so far from it’s being a favour, just let me handle your statuary for the American market, and I’ll call it one of the smartest strokes of business in my life.”

It took me a long time, and it had cost us both much grateful and painful emotion, before I had finally managed to refuse his offer and compounded for a bottle of particular wine.  He dropped the subject at last suddenly with a “Never mind; that’s all done with,” nor did he again refer to the subject, though we passed together the rest of the afternoon, and I accompanied him, on his departure; to the doors of the waiting-room at St. Lazare.  I felt myself strangely alone; a voice told me that I had rejected both the counsels of wisdom and the helping hand of friendship; and as I passed through the great bright city on my homeward way, I measured it for the first time with the eye of an adversary.

CHAPTER V. IN WHICH I AM DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS.

In no part of the world is starvation an agreeable business; but I believe it is admitted there is no worse place to starve in than this city of Paris.  The appearances of life are there so especially gay, it is so much a magnified beer-garden, the houses are so ornate, the theatres so numerous, the very pace of the vehicles is so brisk, that a man in any deep concern of mind or pain of body is constantly driven in upon himself.  In his own eyes, he seems the one serious creature moving in a world of horrible unreality; voluble people issuing from a cafe, the queue at theatre doors, Sunday cabfuls of second-rate pleasure-seekers, the bedizened ladies of the pavement, the show in the jewellers’ windows—­all the familiar 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 Lonsteau or Lucien, Rodolphe or Schaunard.