Of the steps of my misery, I cannot tell at length.  In ordinary times what were politically called “loans” (although they were never meant to be repaid) were matters of constant course among the students, and many a man has partly lived on them for years.  But my misfortune befell me at an awkward juncture.  Many of my friends were gone; others were themselves in a precarious situation.  Romney (for instance) was reduced to tramping Paris in a pair of country sabots, his only suit of clothes so imperfect (in spite of cunningly adjusted pins) that the authorities at the Luxembourg suggested his withdrawal from the gallery.  Dijon, too, was on a leeshore, designing clocks and gas-brackets for a dealer; and the most he could do was to offer me a corner of his studio where I might work.  My own studio (it will be gathered) I had by that time lost; and in the course of my expulsion the Genius of Muskegon was finally separated from her author.  To continue to possess a full-sized statue, a man must have a studio, a gallery, or at least the freedom of a back garden.  He cannot carry it about with him, like a satchel, in the bottom of a cab, nor can he cohabit in a garret, ten by fifteen, with so momentous a companion.  It was my first idea to leave her behind at my departure.  There, in her birthplace, she might lend an inspiration, methought, to my successor.  But the proprietor, with whom I had unhappily quarrelled, seized the occasion to be disagreeable, and called upon me to remove my property.  For a man in such straits as I now found myself, the hire of a lorry was a consideration; and yet even that I could have faced, if I had had anywhere to drive to after it was hired.  Hysterical laughter seized upon me as I beheld (in imagination) myself, the waggoner, and the Genius of Muskegon, standing in the public view of Paris, without the shadow of a destination; perhaps driving at last to the nearest rubbish heap, and dumping there, among the ordures of a city, the beloved child of my invention.  From these extremities I was relieved by a seasonable offer, and I parted from the Genius of Muskegon for thirty francs.  Where she now stands, under what name she is admired or criticised, history does not inform us; but I like to think she may adorn the shrubbery of some suburban tea-garden, where holiday shop-girls hang their hats upon the mother, and their swains (by way of an approach of gallantry) identify the winged infant with the god of love.

In a certain cabman’s eating-house on the outer boulevard I got credit for my midday meal.  Supper I was supposed not to require, sitting down nightly to the delicate table of some rich acquaintances.  This arrangement was extremely ill-considered.  My fable, credible enough at first, and so long as my clothes were in good order, must have seemed worse than doubtful after my coat became frayed about the edges, and my boots began to squelch and pipe along the restaurant floors.  The allowance of one meal