Once in the Danish city, however, the basic difference between husband and wife showed itself in violent form. The atmosphere of rigid Protestant piety, in which his wife's family lived, jarred on the passionate southern temperament of the painter. He discovered that he hated everything in Denmark, the scenery, the climate, the prudery and provinciality of the inhabitants, the lack of Parisian Bohemianism--everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law! And he took no pains to conceal his hatred. He defiantly persisted in maintaining his Parisian freedom of speech and manners. One day, walking on the road that overlooks the bay of the Sund, he chanced to look down. Each of the estates adjoining the beach is equipped with a small cabin for bathing. It is the custom there for the sexes to bathe separately and entirely naked. Gauguin chanced to stop and look down at the moment when the wife of a Protestant minister was stepping into the water. Instead of going on, he decided to indulge his æsthetic interest in the nude. The daughter of the minister's wife saw him and called out to her mother to return. The lady turned and started hastily back to her cabin. But Gauguin continued his inspection. Next day there was the inevitable scandal. Such a state of affairs could clearly not continue. Gauguin would yield nothing to the prejudices of the Danes, nor would his wife's family change their ideas of respectability to suit his queer notions. A separation between husband and wife was inevitable. In 1885 it came about with, one may imagine, no great regrets on either side. To the painter this marriage had all along been a matter of convenience. We shall have ample opportunity to observe throughout his career that Gauguin attached practically no sentiment to the sexual relations into which he entered with various women. He was probably more affectionate with his children, particularly with his daughter Aline, than ever with his wife. It was now far more convenient for him that his wife should remain with her relations, where she would at least have a roof over her head, than accompany him to Paris, whither he was determined to return. Madame Gauguin agreed with this arrangement, hoping to see her husband, now disembarrassed of his family, make a rapid conquest of the Parisian art-world. And so in 1885 Paul Gauguin returned to France once more to try his fortune. V He was now thirty-seven years old. Hitherto the events of his life had been largely controlled by chance; from now on he began to strive more consciously to be the master of his own destiny. It is therefore necessary, before going further with this story, to take stock of the man, both as regards his physical appearance and his intellectual equipment.