"Mon ami, je t'assure, j'ai un public qui me suit."
"Mon ami, veux-tu que je te dis ce que tu a fait; tu a fait encore une vulgarization, une jolie vulgarization, je veux bien, de la note inventée par Millet; tu a ajouté la note claire inventée par Manet, enfin tu suis avec talent le mouvement moderne, voilà tout."
"Parlons d'autre chose: sur la question d'art on ne s'entend jamais."
When we were excited Marshall and I always dropped into French.
"And now tell me," he said, "about this duel."
I could not bring myself to admit, even to Marshall, that I was willing to shoot a man for the sake of the notoriety it would bring me, not because I feared in him any revolt of conscience, but because I dreaded his sneers; he was known to all Paris, I was an obscure something, living in an obscure lodging in London. Had Marshall suspected the truth he would have said pityingly, "My dear Dayne, how can you be so foolish? why will you not be contented to live?" etc…. Such homilies would have been maddening; he was successful, I was not; I knew there was not much in him, un feu de paille, no more, but what would I not have done and given for that feu de paille? So I was obliged to conceal my real motives for desiring a duel, and I spoke strenuously of the gravity of the insult and the necessity of retribution. But Marshall was obdurate. "Insult?" he said. "He hit you with his hand, you hit him with the champagne bottle; you can't have him out after that, there is nothing to avenge, you wiped out the insult yourself; if you had not struck him with the champagne bottle the case would be different."
We went out to dine, we went to the theatre, and after the theatre we went home and aestheticised till three in the morning. I spoke no more of the duel, I was sick of it; luck, I saw, was against me, and I let Marshall have his way. He showed his usual tact, a letter was drawn up in which my friend withdrew the blow of his hand, I withdrew the blow of the bottle, and the letter was signed by Marshall and two other gentlemen.
Hypocritical reader, you draw your purity garments round you, you say, "How very base;" but I say unto you remember how often you have longed, if you are a soldier in her Majesty's army, for war,—war that would bring every form of sorrow to a million fellow-creatures, and you longed for all this to happen, because it might bring your name into the Gazette. Hypocritical reader, think not too hardly of me; hypocritical reader, think what you like of me, your hypocrisy will alter nothing; in telling you of my vices I am only telling you of your own; hypocritical reader, in showing you my soul I am showing you your own; hypocritical reader, exquisitely hypocritical reader, you are my brother, I salute you.
Day passed over day: I lived in that horrible lodging; I continued to labour at my novel; it seemed an impossible task—defeat glared at me from every corner of that frouzy room. My English was so bad, so thin,—stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the style. Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. Nothing mattered to me, but this one thing. To put an end to the landlady's cheating, and to bind myself to remain at home, I entered into an arrangement with her that she was to supply me with board and lodgings for three pounds a week, and henceforth resisting all Curzon Street temptations, I trudge home through November fogs, to eat a chop in a frouzy lodging-house. I studied the horrible servant as one might an insect under a microscope. "What an admirable book she would make, but what will the end be? if I only knew the end!" I had more and more difficulty in keeping the fat landlady at arm's length, and the nasty child was well beaten one day for lingering about my door. I saw poor Miss L. nightly, on the stairs of this infamous house, and I never wearied of talking to her of her hopes and ambitions, of the young man she admired. She used to ask me about my novel.
Poor Miss L.! Where is she? I do not know, but I shall not forget the time when I used to listen for her footstep on the midnight stairs. Often I was too despondent, when my troubles lay too heavily and darkly upon me, I let her go up to her garret without a word. Despondent days and nights when I cried, Shall I never pass from this lodging? shall I never be a light in that London, long, low, misshapen, that dark monumental stream flowing through the lean bridges; and what if I were a light in this umber-coloured mass,—shadows falling, barges moored midway in a monumental stream? Happiness abides only in the natural affections—in a home and a sweet wife. Would she whom I saw to-night marry me? How sweet she was in her simple naturalness, the joys she has known have been slight and pure, not violent and complex as mine. Ah, she is not for me, I am not fit for her, I am too sullied for her lips…. Were I to win her could I be dutiful, true?…