"To Charenton," replied the indignant first officer; Charenton being the great lunatic asylum near Paris! The vessel got no nearer to France than Copenhagen, when the melancholy news of Sedan came. The name _Jerome Napoleon_ was painted out, that of _Desaix_ substituted, and the unfortunate cruiser was obliged to remain in the waters off Copenhagen till the close of the war in 1871, contenting herself with the capture of one small ship as prize. III In 1871, after the cessation of hostilities, Gauguin obtained leave, renewable at the end of eighteen months, to quit the navy. He was now heartily sick of the sea, because of the enforced idleness and wearisome discipline that he had now endured aboard the _Desaix_ for three years. Besides the opportunity of another career was offering itself and he felt that he must seize it. His mother had died in the interval since he had last seen France and, in dying, had confided the care of her two children to a well-to-do Paris banker, Gustave Arosa. This man immediately found for Paul a place at Bertin's, a banking house with which he was connected. And now there opened for the young man a period not only the most prosperous but in retrospect the most amazing of his career. Though his character had already displayed itself to be that of an instinctive nomad, a lover of the tropics and essentially a pagan savage, yet it is apparent that he now yielded readily to the entrancing prospect of amassing a fortune by speculation on the Bourse, without troubling himself too much with the question whether his new position might not entail heavier responsibilities in the future. He had not been long at Bertin's before he found out how to make money quite easily. Possibly this was not a very difficult thing to do, for the Paris stock market had been utterly disorganized by the events of 1870-71, and, now that peace was signed, France was making one of those rapid recoveries that have been so common in her history. Stocks were going up and trade was booming. Gauguin was able to take advantage of these circumstances to such an extent that in one year, we are told, he made as much as forty thousand francs. In 1873 he married, thus saddling himself with a responsibility he was never wholly to shake off. His wife, Mette Sophia Gad, was the daughter of a Protestant clergyman of Copenhagen. The family was a good one and enjoyed an honorable position in the society of the Danish capital. The daughters had been educated at Paris, and one of them had married a member of the Norwegian Parliament, while another had become the first wife of the painter, Fritz Thaulow. When or where Gauguin first met his future bride is uncertain, but it was probably during the stay of the _Desaix_ at Copenhagen. At any rate it seems that he was eager to marry, as the ceremony (a purely civil one, owing to his wife being a Protestant) was delayed owing to the loss of his father's certificate of birth in the bombardment of St. Cloud.