already in his figure with all the surroundings � lamps his facility interesting me deeply i asked the young lady next me if she knew who he was she could not tell me at four o clock there was a general from the we to a neighbouring to drink beer and as we stooped of a young man under an the young man was his name spoke to me in english was my name and had we not exchanged a few words in so and so s so and so was the great man whose like had awakened in me the usual reflections on the chances of life were of course made and then followed the inevitable will you dine with me to night thought the following day would suit him better but i was very pressing he offered to meet me at my hotel or would i come with him to his rooms he would show me some pictures � some trifles he had brought up from the country nothing would please me better we got into a cab then every moment revealed new qualities new in my friend tall strong handsome beautifully dressed and talking french like a native he continued to and capture my imagination he said it was only natural that he should speak french for he was bom in and had lived there all his life but the accident of birth rather stimulated than my pride in being seen in his company he spoke of the fashionable and he stopped at a s to have his hair curled and i was on the of expectation to see his apartments of a young man apartments were not so grand as i expected but when he explained that he had just spent ten thousand pounds in two years and was now living on six or seven hundred a month which his mother would allow him until he had painted and had sold a certain series of pictures which he contemplated beginning at once my admiration increased � to wonder and i examined with awe the great fireplace which had been constructed at his orders and admired the iron pot which hung by a chain above an artificial fire this detail will suggest the rest of the the turkey carpet die brass lamps the screen the pieces of the oak chairs covered with red velvet the oak wardrobe that had been picked up somewhere � a ridiculous bargain and the inevitable bed with columns there were filled with foreign and palms stood in die comers of the rooms pulled out a few pictures but he paid very little heed to my compliments and sitting down at the piano with a great deal of and dashing about the keys he off a what is that i asked oh nothing something i composed the other evening i had a fit of the and didn t go out it of a young man i think it beautiful did you really compose that the other evening at this a knock was heard at the door and introduced me to a beautiful english girl with that see nothing and words that mean nothing an woman receives the man she finds with her sweetheart but it subsequently that had an appointment that she was dining out but would however call in the morning and give him a sitting for the portrait he was painting of her i had hitherto worked very regularly at the but s society was an attraction that could not be resisted a long began and while my own i my friend s idleness and him to return to work for the sake of his talent which i believed in but s beauty held him a winning it was and his delight in her was thorough and his gay dashing manner made me feel happy and his experience opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life on my arrival in paris i had visited in the company of my the and the and had dined at the d or by myself but took me to strange students where dinners were paid for in pictures to a of a young man place where a table d was held under a tent in a back garden frequented by the lights of love of with whom we went to walk in the gardens of the or the it often seemed to me that was not conscious of the fantastic of the foliage under the or of the of the life we were leading in the company of women known only to us by their christian names he took it all for granted whereas i lived it in my imagination exalted by the the band the of the dancers and most of all by the returning home in open carriages through the close warm night the darkness by an feather hanging over the hood of the carriage in front of us an edge of skirt passing beyond the foot board she is in his arms i said does she love him i asked and watched the moon and compared it to a magic lantern hanging out of the sky now we seemed to live in and and the were filled with impressions had a friend in this street and another in that it was only necessary for him to cry stop to the coachman and to run up two or three flights of stairs of a young man madame est si se la d and we were shown into a handsomely furnished apartment a lady would enter hurriedly and an animated discussion was begun i did not know french sufficiently well to follow the conversation but i remember it always commenced mon ami and was sprinkled with the phrase the ladies themselves had only just returned from or and they were generally involved in mysterious or were busily engaged in claims for several millions of against different foreign and just as i 