‘But—­with your connections—­’ I began.

‘Oh, my connections!’ he cried.  ’There was the rub.  London is the cruellest town in Europe.  For sheer cold blood and heartlessness give Londoners the palm.  I had connections enough for the first month or so, and then people found out things that didn’t concern them.  They found out some things that were true, and they imagined other things that were false.  They wouldn’t have my wife; they told the most infamous lies about her; and I wouldn’t have them.  Could I be civil to people who insulted and slandered her?  I had no connections in London, except with the underworld.  I got down to copying parts for theatrical orchestras; and working twelve hours a day, earned about thirty shillings a week.’

‘You might have come back to Paris.’

’And fared worse.  I couldn’t have earned thirty pence in Paris.  Mind you, the only trade I had learned was that of a musical composer; and I couldn’t compose music that people would buy.  I should have starved as a copyist in Paris, where copyists are more numerous and worse paid.  Teach there?  But to one competent master of harmony in London there are ten in Paris.  No; it was a hopeless case.’

‘It is incomprehensible—­incomprehensible,’ said I.

’But wait—­wait till you’ve heard the end.  One would think I had had enough—­not so?  One would think my cup of bitterness was full.  No fear!  There was a stronger cup still a-brewing for me.  When Fortune takes a grudge against a man, she never lets up.  She exacts the uttermost farthing.  I was pretty badly off, but I had one treasure left—­I had Godelinette.  I used to think that she was my compensation.  I would say to myself, “A man can’t have all blessings.  How can you expect others, when you’ve got her?” And I would accuse myself of ingratitude for complaining of my unsuccess.  Then she fell ill.  My God, how I watched over, prayed over her!  It seemed impossible—­I could not believe—­that she would be taken from me.  Yet, Harry, do you know what that poor child was thinking?  Do you know what her dying thoughts were—­her wishes?  Throughout her long painful illness she was thinking that she was an obstacle in my way, a weight upon me; that if it weren’t for her, I should get on, have friends, a position; that it would be a good thing for me if she should die; and she was hoping in her poor little heart that she wouldn’t get well!  Oh, I know it, I knew it—­and you see me here alive.  She let herself die for my sake—­as if I could care for anything without her.  That’s what brought us here, to France, to Bordeaux—­her illness.  The doctors said she must pass the spring out of England, away from the March winds, in the South; and I begged and borrowed money enough to take her.  And we were on our way to Arcachon; but when we reached Bordeaux she was too ill to continue the journey, and—­she died here.’