When he failed of re-election many of his friends resigned. “It is all very simple,” he said. “The ‘Royal Society of British Artists’ has disintegrated,--the ‘Artists’ have come out, the ‘British’ remain.” When interviewed to obtain his explanation of the “state of affairs:” “The state of affairs?” said Mr. Whistler, in his light and airy way, raising his eyebrows and twinkling his eyes, as if it were all the best possible fun in the world; “why, my dear sir, there’s positively _no_ state of affairs at all. Contrary to public declaration, there’s actually nothing chaotic in the whole business. On the contrary, everything is in order, and just as it should be,--the survival of the fittest as regards the presidency, don’t you see; and, well--Suffolk Street is itself again! A new government has come in; and, as I told the members the other night, I congratulate the society on the result of their vote: for no longer can it be said that the right man is in the wrong place. No doubt their pristine sense of undisturbed somnolence will again settle upon them after the exasperated mental condition arising from the unnatural strain recently put upon the old ship. Eh? what? ha! ha!” He painted a signboard for the entrance to the galleries,--a lion and a butterfly,--a “harmony in gold and red,” with which, he says, “I took as much trouble as I did with the best picture I ever painted.” But his successor in office clothed the golden lion “with a coat of dirty black,” and effaced the butterfly entirely; whereupon he called the society to task for destroying the work of a fellow-artist, and the entire episode appears in the “Gentle Art” as only he could tell it. * * * * * In 1887 he married the widow of E. W. Godwin, the architect of the “White House,” and not long after they went to live in Paris, at 110 Rue du Bac. The narrow passage-way that leads from the street to where they lived is, like thousands of others in Old Paris, just an archway between two shops, unpromising and uninviting. Passing through, one finds a small paved court immediately in the rear, and on three sides of this court the entrances and windows of the apartments and houses opening therefrom. The court itself is not without interest. On one side there is an old bronze fountain, long since dry; about the walls a sculptured frieze, much the worse for wear; everything of by-gone days,--the very architecture, in all its details, of another generation.