I really believe that in bygone ages he would have moved the world with that look, and been another Peter the Hermit!
He became a pupil at the academy under De Keyser and Van Lerius, and worked harder than ever.
He took a room nearly all window on a second floor in the Marché aux Œufs, just under the shadow of the gigantic spire which rings a fragment of melody every seven minutes and a half—and the whole tune at midnight, fortissimo.
He laid in a stock of cigars at less than a centime apiece, and dried them in the sun; they left as he smoked them a firm white ash two inches long; and he grew so fond of them that he cared to smoke nothing else.
He rose before the dawn, and went for a swim more than a mile away—got to the academy at six—worked till eight—breakfasted on a little roll called a pistolet, and a cup of coffee; then the academy again from nine till twelve—when dinner, the cheapest he had ever known, but not the worst. Then work again all the afternoon, copying old masters at the Gallery. Then a cheap supper, a long walk along the quais or ramparts or outside—a game of dominoes, and a glass or two of "Malines" or "Louvain"—then bed, without invading hordes; the Flemish are as clean as the Dutch; and there he would soon smoke and read himself to sleep in spite of chimes—which lull you, when once you get "achimatized," as he called it, meaning of course to be funny: a villanous kind of fun—caught, I fear, in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. It used to rain puns in the City—especially in the Stock Exchange, which is close to Barge Yard.
It was a happy life, and he grew to like it better than any life he had led yet; besides, he improved rapidly, as his facility was great—for painting as for everything he tried his hand at.
He also had a very agreeable social existence.
One morning at the academy, two or three days after his arrival, he was accosted by a fellow‑student—one Tescheles—who introduced himself as an old pupil of Troplong's in the Rue des Belges. They had a long chat in French about the old Paris studio. Among other things, Tescheles asked if there were still any English there.
"Oui"—says Barty—"un nommé Valtères"....
Barty pronounced this name as if it were French; and noticed that Tescheles smiled, exclaiming: