With the aid of a copying apparatus he set up and printed several numbers of a paper called, first _Les Guèpes_, and later _Le Sourire_. The contents of these papers have been printed and are the poorest stuff that Gauguin ever wrote. But these crude gibes at the governor and at the colonial administrations generally, together with the equally crude caricatures that Gauguin drew of prominent people in the colony, seem to have produced a stir. People began to fear him at last; it was, for a moment, a triumph. But Tahiti had by this time grown too civilized to hold him. A railway had been built into the interior; the Protestant missionaries grew every day more powerful; disease and drink were rapidly carrying off the natives. Gauguin for a time thought of turning doctor and even wrote to de Monfreid for medicines. But shortly he found his own need of medicine as great as that of any of the wretched natives. An epidemic of influenza struck the island and the painter was obliged to take to the hospital, where he had to pay twelve francs a day. To add to his griefs, the supply of food in the island became scarce and prices ran up to an impossible figure. Hearing that life in the Marquesas Islands was cheaper, that the natives there were physically more unspoilt, also that Europeans were few and far between, he decided to quit Tahiti and install himself in the island of Hiva-Hoa or Dominica. He hoped to find there elements of a purer savagery and to paint with fresh strength. This hope was destined to be realized only in part. Gauguin's art is almost entirely associated with three spots, Martinique, Brittany and Tahiti. He might have done better work at other places, had he had the time, the opportunity or the strength. In the case of his removal to the Marquesas it was the strength that was lacking. Traces of the exhaustion of his endurance and of the affection of his eyes are to be found even in his latest Tahitian pictures. Owing to his habit of dating his pictures, we can follow the failure of his power. The first things that he painted after his return are, on the whole, superior to the productions of 1891-93. The _Te Arii Vahine_ or Reclining Woman, of 1896 is finer in design even than the _L'Esprit Veille_ of 1892-3. The _Youth Between Two Girls, La Case_ (1897), the beautiful _Navé Navé Mahana_ (Delightful Days) of 1896, with its feeling of a terrestrial paradise--these are masterpieces of their kind. But the portrait of himself (1897) already shows signs of inability to finish and remains a sketch, albeit a powerful one. And with many of the succeeding works there came a greater impatience, a greater carelessness, a more hectic and feverish lack of control. The more savage Gauguin's work grew, the less became his strength to produce it. One is reminded of a similar case to his, that of the Irish dramatist, Synge.