Meanwhile, the devoted de Monfreid had been busy. He had enlisted the interest of Degas, of Vollard and others, and had succeeded in selling some of the artist's pictures. Gauguin might now have counted upon a steady income, had he chosen to forget past injuries. But with him, there was to be no compromise. Because Bernard, Sérusier, Maurice Denis had made his theories popular and had even claimed to have some influence on his development, he refused either to be ranked with them or to exhibit in their company. Of course he merely made himself more unpopular in Paris by such conduct. But Gauguin's personality was of a kind unable to endure the society of second-rate people. He admired genius where he found it, in a few solitaries such as Degas, Poe, Balzac, and Mallarmé. For ordinary society, he preferred either natives or children. Nevertheless his pictures were sold and, by de Monfreid's efforts, he found himself out of debt in 1899 and able to return to his house, now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay. Things seemed to improve a little, though he was now permanently crippled by the disease of his legs. He set himself once more to paint and to plant the flower seeds which de Monfreid had sent, at his request, from France. Ill, ruined in health and physique, a victim to drugs, he went onward to his goal. [Illustration: Matamua (Olden Days).] II It is difficult to judge fairly the next stage in Gauguin's career, unless we remember that he had suffered so much from his physical ailments, from the complete solitude in which he found himself and from the terrible crisis of the previous year, that he was afflicted for the time being with something closely resembling persecutional mania. He had been driven to war on civilization and he believed that some unknown power was now pursuing him with its hatred. In his next stage, we find him turning even against the natives. On his return to Tahiti he had taken a young native girl aged thirteen-and-a-half for wife, companion and model. She had served him devotedly, had procured him food when he was unable to walk, had nursed him in his illness. After his return to the house from Papeete, she had resumed with him the old life and had given birth to a child. Now, for some reason or no reason, Gauguin suddenly took it into his head that she had robbed him, and drove her out. The poor soul, however, returned and, as the painter was by this time a helpless cripple, he attempted to call in the law to enforce her removal, claiming that her return was a violation of his domicile. Of course, the law did nothing. This only further enraged Gauguin. He decided to attack the entire colonial administration. Since his return, he had been everywhere treated by the Europeans at Tahiti as a madman or fool. Now he would get his revenge.