We could but utter coarse gibes and exclaim, “What could have induced him to paint such things? surely he must have seen that it was absurd.  I wonder if the Impressionists are in earnest or if it is only une blague qu’on nous fait?” Then we stood and screamed at Monet, that most exquisite painter of blonde light.  We stood before the “Turkeys,” and seriously we wondered if “it was serious work,”—­that chef d’oeuvre! the high grass that the turkeys are gobbling is flooded with sunlight so swift and intense that for a moment the illusion is complete.  “Just look at the house! why, the turkeys couldn’t walk in at the door.  The perspective is all wrong.”  Then followed other remarks of an educational kind; and when we came to those piercingly personal visions of railway stations by the same painter,—­those rapid sensations of steel and vapour,—­our laughter knew no bounds.  “I say, Marshall, just look at this wheel; he dipped his brush into cadmium yellow and whisked it round, that’s all.”  Nor did we understand any more Renoir’s rich sensualities of tone; nor did the mastery with which he achieves an absence of shadow appeal to us.  You see colour and light in his pictures as you do in nature, and the child’s criticism of a portrait—­“Why is one side of the face black?” is answered.  There was a half length nude figure of a girl.  How the round fresh breasts palpitate in the light! such a glorious glow of whiteness was attained never before.  But we saw nothing except that the eyes were out of drawing.

For art was not for us then as it is now,—­a mere emotion, right or wrong only in proportion to its intensity; we believed then in the grammar of art, perspective, anatomy, and la jambe qui porte; and we found all this in Julien’s studio.

A year passed; a year of art and dissipation—­one part art, two parts dissipation.  We mounted and descended at pleasure the rounds of society’s ladder.  One evening we would spend at Constant’s, Rue de la Gaiete, in the company of thieves and housebreakers; on the following evening we were dining with a duchess or a princess in the Champs Elysees.  And we prided ourselves vastly on our versatility in using with equal facility the language of the “fence’s” parlour, and that of the literary salon; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in the other.  Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, “The princess, I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;” and then in terrible slang we shouted a benediction on some “crib” that was going to be broken into that evening.  And we thought there was something very thrilling in leaving the Rue de la Gaiete, returning home to dress, and presenting our spotless selves to the elite.  And we succeeded very well, as indeed all young men do who waltz perfectly and avoid making love to the wrong woman.