"M. Marshall, is he at home?" "M. Marshall left here some months ago." "Do you know his address?" "I'll ask my husband." "Do you know M. Marshall's address?" "Yes, he's gone to live in the Rue de Douai." "What number?" "I think it is fifty--four." "Thanks." "Coachman, wake up; drive me to the Rue de Douai." But Marshall was not to be found at the Rue de Douai; and he had left no address. There was nothing for it but to go to the studio; I should be able to obtain news of him there--perhaps find him. But when I pulled aside the curtain, the accustomed piece of slim nakedness did not greet my eyes, only the blue apron of an old woman enveloped in a cloud of dust. "The gentlemen are not here to-day, the studio is closed, I am sweeping up." "Oh, and where is M. Julien?" "I cannot say, sir: perhaps at the _café_, or perhaps he is gone to the country." This was not very encouraging, and now, my enthusiasm thoroughly damped, I strolled along _le Passage_, looking at the fans, the bangles and the litter of cheap trinkets that each window was filled with. On the left at the corner of the Boulevard was our _café_. As I came forward the waiter moved one of the tin tables, and then I saw the fat Provençal. But just as if he had seen me yesterday he said, "_Tiens! c'est vous; une demi-tasse? oui...garçon, une demi-tasse_." Presently the conversation turned on Marshall; they had not seen much of him lately. "_Il parait qu'il est plus amoureux que jamais_," Julien replied sardonically. V I found my friend in large furnished apartments on the ground floor in the Rue Duphot. The walls were stretched with blue silk, there were large mirrors and great gilt cornices. Passing into the bedroom I found the young god wallowing in the finest of fine linen--in a great Louis XV. bed, and there were cupids above him. "Holloa! what, you back again, George Moore? we thought we weren't going to see you again." "It's nearly one o'clock; get up. What's the news?" "To-day is the opening of the exhibition of the Impressionists. We'll have a bit of breakfast round the corner, at Durant's, and we'll go on there. I hear that Bedlam is nothing to it; there is a canvas there twenty feet square and in three tints: pale yellow for the sunlight, brown for the shadows, and all the rest is sky-blue. There is, I am told, a lady walking in the foreground with a ring-tailed monkey, and the tail is said to be three yards long."