But the excitement of climbing up and down the social ladder did not stave off our craving for art; and there came about this time a very decisive event in our lives.  Marshall’s last and really grande passion had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him to turn his thoughts to painting as a means of livelihood.  This decided me.  I asked him to come and live with me, and to be as near our studio as possible, I took an appartement in the Passage des Panoramas.  It was not pleasant that your window should open, not to the sky, but to an unclean prospect of glass roofing; nor was it agreeable to get up at seven in the morning; and ten hours of work daily are trying to the resolution even of the best intentioned.  But we had sworn to forego all pleasures for the sake of art—­table d’hotes in the Rue Maubeuge, French and foreign duchesses in the Champs Elysees, thieves in the Rue de la Gaiete.

I was entering therefore on a duel with Marshall for supremacy in an art for which, as has already been said, I possessed no qualifications.  It will readily be understood how a mind like mine, so keenly alive to all impulses, and so unsupported by any moral convictions, would suffer in so keen a contest waged under such unequal and cruel conditions.  It was in truth a year of great passion and great despair.  Defeat is bitter when it comes swiftly and conclusively, but when defeat falls by inches like the fatal pendulum in the pit, the agony is a little out of reach of words to define.  It was even so.  I remember the first day of my martyrdom.  The clocks were striking eight; we chose our places, got into position.  After the first hour, I compared my drawing with Marshall’s.  He had, it is true, caught the movement of the figure better than I, but the character and the quality of his work was miserable.  That of mine was not.  I have said I possessed no artistic facility, but I did not say faculty, my drawing was never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined.  I possessed all the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without which all is valueless;—­I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off a clever caricature of his schoolmaster or make a life-like sketch of his favourite horse on the barn door with a piece of chalk.

The following week Marshall made a great deal of progress; I thought the model did not suit me, and hoped for better luck next time.  That time never came, and at the end of the first month I was left toiling hopelessly in the distance.  Marshall’s mind, though shallow, was bright, and he understood with strange ease all that was told him, and was able to put into immediate practice the methods of work inculcated by the professors.  In fact, he showed himself singularly capable of education; little could be drawn out, but a great deal could be put in (using the word in its modern, not in its original sense).  He showed himself intensely anxious to learn and to