I asked him where he had studied and learned his art, for it could be easily seen that he had had some training; his portraits were not half bad, and showed a knowledge of drawing. He thereupon told me his story. He had come to Paris thirteen years before from Nantes, Brittany, to study art. His father kept a small grocery and provision-shop in Nantes, and lived in meagre circumstances. The son having discovered what his father deemed a remarkable talent for drawing when a boy, the father sent him to Paris, with an allowance of a hundred francs a month, and he had to deny himself severely to furnish it. When the young man arrived at Paris he studied diligently at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts for a while, and became acquainted with many of the students and models. He soon found the easy life of the _café_s, with the models for companions, more fascinating than the dull grind of the school. It was much pleasanter to enjoy the gayety of the nights and sleep all day than drone and labor at his easel. As his small allowance did not permit of extravagance, he fell deeply into debt, and gave more heed to absinthe than his meals,--it is cheaper, more alluring, and brings an exhilaration that sharpens wit and equips the soul with wings. For a whole year the father was in total ignorance of his son's conduct, but one day a friend, who had seen the young man in Paris, laid the ugly story in his father's ear. This so enraged the father that he instantly stopped the remittances and disowned his son. All appeals for money, all promises to reform, were in vain, and so the young madcap was forced to look about for a means of subsistence. And thus it was that he drifted into the occupation of a sketch artist, making portraits in the _café_s all night and sleeping in daytime. This brought him a scant living. But there was his mistress, Marcelle, always faithful to him. She worked during the day at sewing, and shared her small earnings with him. All went fairly well during the summer, but in winter the days were short, Marcelle's earnings were reduced, and the weather was bitter cold. Still, it was not so bad as it might be, he protested; but underneath his easy flippancy I imagined I caught a shadow,--a flitting sense of the hollowness and misery and hopelessness and shame of it all. But I am not certain of that. He had but gone the way of many and many another, and others now are following in his footsteps, deluding self-denying parents, and setting foot in the road which, so broad and shining at the beginning, narrows and darkens as it leads nearer and nearer to the rat- holes under the bridges of the Seine, and to the grim house whose lights forever shine at night under the shadow of Notre-Dame.