He attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his passage back to France. In vain. He hoped that buyers for his pictures would come forward in Paris. Useless. Fortunately his fame was now spreading to neutral countries. Thanks to his wife's efforts he was invited to take part in an exhibition in Denmark. [Illustration: The Old Spirit.] On the eighth of December, 1892, he forwarded a packet of eight pictures to this exhibition, among which was the superb canvas _L'Esprit Veille_. The picture created an immense stir at Copenhagen when exhibited the next year and brought him in some money. But in Paris his fame steadily declined and he was every day less talked about. Albert Aurier, a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to make his art known, was dead. Theodore Van Gogh, who had supported him and had attempted to find buyers for his work, had followed his unfortunate brother into the grave. Meanwhile his pupils of yesterday, Bernard, Sérusier and the rest, were going about Paris vaguely hinting that they had taught Gauguin something and that Cézanne and Van Gogh were better artists. The halo of victory which had crowned his departure from Paris was rapidly fading. He had painted already at Tahiti, as he knew, magnificent pictures--pictures better than anything he had done before. Moreover, he believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in Paris as elsewhere. What he had seen in Tahiti had given him the necessary material upon which his imagination, always synthetic and non-realistic, could work. His health and his future prospects could only suffer by a longer stay. He believed that in returning to Paris he could make himself once and for all an outstanding figure. If he did not, perhaps it would be better to give up painting altogether. He was growing old. On the thirtieth of August 1893, he arrived at Marseilles with four francs in his pocket, after a terrible voyage in the steerage, in the height of summer, during which three unfortunate passengers died of heat in the Red Sea. It is almost incredible to think of, that this man, during the two years he had been away from France, had painted, despite failing health, and financial miseries, over forty canvases, among them such masterpieces as L'Esprit Veille, Matamua, and Ia Orana Maria. And yet this very same man arrived back in France a pauper! Truly, he might well say of himself, that he was born with the evil eye, which brings to its owner, as well as others, only misfortune. III