These little businesses perched away in corners with the air of having no communication with any outside world are one of the surprises of Paris.  One asks one’s self how the people live who go into these trades, what fastidious Providence can, for example, send clients to a photographer lodged on a fifth floor in a nondescript region, well beyond the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, or books to keep to the accountant below.  Jenkins, as he made this reflection, smiled in pity, then went straight in as he was invited by the following inscription, “Enter without knocking.”  Alas! the permission was scarcely abused.  A tall young man wearing spectacles, and writing at a small table, with his legs wrapped in a travelling-rug, rose precipitately to greet the visitor whom his short sight had prevented him from recognising.

“Good-morning, Andre,” said the doctor, stretching out his loyal hand.

“M.  Jenkins!”

“You see, I am good-natured as I have always been.  Your conduct towards us, your obstinacy in persisting in living far away from your parents, imposed a great reserve on me, for my own dignity’s sake; but your mother has wept.  And here I am.”

While he spoke, he examined the poor little studio, with its bare walls, its scanty furniture, the brand-new photographic apparatus, the little Prussian fireplace, new also and never yet used for a fire, all forced into painfully clear evidence beneath the direct light falling from the glass roof.  The drawn face, the scanty beard of the young man, to whom the bright colour of his eyes, the narrow height of his forehead, his long and fair hair thrown backward gave the air of a visionary, everything was accentuated in the crude light; and also the resolute will in that clear glance which settled upon Jenkins coldly, and in advance to all his reasonings, to all his protestations, opposed an invincible resistance.

But the good Jenkins feigned not to perceive anything of this.

“You know, my dear Andre, since the day when I married your mother I have regarded you as my son.  I looked forward to leaving you my practice and my patients, to putting your foot in a golden stirrup, happy to see you following a career consecrated to the welfare of humanity.  All at once, without giving any reason, without taking into any consideration the effect which such a rupture might well have in the eyes of the world, you have separated yourself from us, you have abandoned your studies, renounced your future, in order to launch out into I know not what eccentric life, engaging in a ridiculous trade, the refuge and the excuse of all unclassed people.”

“I follow this occupation in order to earn a living.  It is bread and butter in the meantime.”

“In what meantime?  While you are waiting for literary glory?”

He glanced disdainfully at the scribbling scattered over the table.