"Have you no better reason than that?" said the great man.
"Our n-n-names are alike," stammered Mark.
"Tiens! Any reason is better than none. Samphire et Saphir."
"And the l-l-less," said Mark, "includes the g-g-greater."
Saphir laughed at the compliment, and told Mark he might join his atelier. "Only you must work—work—work. That is my first word to you—work!"
Mark worked furiously. Many well-informed persons believe that an art student's life in Paris (particularly that part of Paris which lies on the left bank of the Seine) is a sort of carnival—a procession up and down the Boul' Mich', varied by frequent excursions to the Moulin Rouge and other places of entertainment in Montmartre. Of the unremitting labour, of the grinding poverty, of the self-denial cheerfully confronted by the greater number, an adequate idea perhaps may be gleaned from Zola's L'OEuvre, which sets forth, photographically and pathologically, French art life as it is. L'OEuvre, however, deals with the struggle for supremacy between the academic and the "plein air" schools. When Mark entered the Beaux Arts, this struggle, although not at an end, had become equalised, the balance of power and popularity lying rather with the plein air party, of which Saphir was the bright particular star. Saphir introduced Mark to Pynsent, then considered one of the rising men. Born in the East of America, related on his mother's side to two of the Brook Farm celebrities, Pynsent had renounced a promising career as a lawyer in the hope of making his fortune out West. In California he lost what money he possessed trying to develop a "salted mine." Then he "taught school" for bread and butter—a foothill school on the slopes of the Santa Lucia mountains, where the pupils were the children of squatters, and "Pikers," and greasers. Here he found his true vocation. For a couple of years he denied himself the commonest comforts, living on beans for the most part, saving his pitiful salary. Then he worked his passage round the Horn in a sailing-ship, and began at thirty years of age to draw from plaster casts! Since, he had taken most of the prizes open to foreigners at the École des Beaux Arts!
Pynsent found Mark a lodging and studio in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, not far from the famous Café Procope, the café of Voltaire and Verlaine. With Pynsent as guide, he learned to know Paris—the Paris of the Valois and Bourbon, the Paris of the Terror, of the Empire, and of the Republic. Pynsent had a prodigious memory, and an absorbing passion for colour. He was always hopeful, generous, proud, inordinately ambitious, and willing to sacrifice everything to his art. He exercised an enormous influence upon Mark, making plain to him the virtue which underlies so much that is vile and vicious on the surface.
"Men fail here," said he, "not so much from incapacity as ignorance. I could not interpret Paris to you or to myself had I not served my apprenticeship in California. Because my energies were misdirected there, I have learned to direct them here. Great Cæsar's ghost! What mistakes I have made! But you can bet your life that the fellow who makes no mistakes is either a parasite or a jelly-fish. Tell me what a man's mistakes are, and I'll tell you what he is."
"Am I making a mistake?" said Mark.
He had worked—furiously, as has been said—for two years. Pynsent smoked his cigarette for a full minute before he replied: "I don't know yet. I shall know soon."