The happy discovery of a letter which Gauguin wrote at this time to a Danish painter, Willemsen by name, clears up the long-vexed point of what induced him to take this decision.[1] He chanced to attend, or to read the report of, a lecture on Tahiti, given by a certain Van der Veere. Van der Veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to suit the tastes of a fashionable audience. He pictured Tahiti as a terrestrial paradise where money was unknown. "Under a sky without winter, upon an earth of a marvelous fertility, the Tahitian has only to lift his hands to gather in his food; so he never works. For him life means singing and making love." It is easy to picture the effect of such phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like Gauguin. Tahiti held out the hope that Martinique had failed to realize; the hope that he might be the first painter of the tropics. Gauguin's imagination was fired by the idea. He declared that he intended to quit Europe and live in Tahiti henceforward. There he could perhaps forget all the hardships of the past, and die forgotten by Paris, happy and free to paint "sans gloire aucune pour les autres." And if his children could join him there, all the better--his isolation would then be complete.[2] The young Symbolists of course shouted "Bravo!" at the news of the proposed voyage. Tahiti! Another symbol! They had already spoilt Gauguin sufficiently for serious art, by persuading him to embark on various symbolistic enterprises, such as the production of a masterpiece entitled _Loss Of Maidenhood_, which has fortunately vanished, and an etching representing Mallarmé with Poe's Raven in the background. Perhaps their eagerness to see Gauguin safely embarked for Tahiti only concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday. At all events Gauguin was fêted, wined, dined. Thirty of his works were auctioned off at the Hôtel Drouot, producing the small sum of nine thousand six hundred and eighty francs. The Government consented to make his voyage to Oceania an official "artistic mission," on condition that this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses. A banquet was held at the Café Voltaire, where all the Symbolists were assembled. Gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a similar banquet, which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony. Finally a benefit performance was given by the Théâtre d'Art for the departing artist and also for Verlaine, then rapidly sinking into the squalor of his last years.[3] The most interesting fact about the performance was that, included in the program by a strange stroke of irony, Maurice Maeterlinck's play _L'Intruse_ made on this occasion its first appearance on the stage. Death walked the stage before Gauguin's eyes, as if to show him what to expect. And yet he did not draw back.