None of the ominous hungry growls from squalid purlieus can arrest the ears of young Wynne Ryland, who has come to Paris to shake off the memory of sad Old Bailey, who sees naught but the colour and romance. Thus he breathes into his soul, with strong, eager lungs, the perfume-scented air. With the enthusiasm of genius he plunges into work at the seductive studio of the inspector of the Gobelins. Sieur Boucher is at the summit of his fame, petted by Madame de Pompadour, commissioned by King Pan. Surely the handsome, dark-faced Welshman, who can trace on copper the gallant compositions of his master as finely as any pupil of Le Bas, must have won the love of the gay, profligate painter. And, should it be his humour, what a strange world Monsieur Boucher can reveal to the pupil’s eyes! One day, perhaps, he may hold before him a jewelled fan, glowing with luscious pictures, which he has just created for la belle Marquise. Or it will be a fancy sketch of some lacquered tabouret that he has designed for her private room at Versailles. Sometimes he may grasp the young man’s arm, and, drawing him a little aside, will open a secret portfolio, whispering, with a smile upon his pleasure-worn face, and drooping his dissolute eyelids, “Pour le boudoir de Madame dans l’Hôtel de l’Arsenal.” Then, while Wynne Ryland gazes upon the beautiful Anacreontic pictures, which no scene within the cities of the plains can have excelled, his black, thoughtful eyes will flash with admiration, and his white teeth glitter between his parted lips. It is no place for innocence, nor for narrow virtue, this glowing, gilded salon of Sieur Boucher the incomparable. Yet the young Welshman does not neglect his proper craft. As the work of later years bears eloquent testimony, none of the gifted pupils of Le Bas have profited more from the instruction of that famous school. Jacques Philippe, as might be expected, turns him on to the plates of his _Fables choisies_, designs after Oudry-interpretations of La Fontaine parables, spread over four mighty tomes, beloved of the amateur who collects the _estampes galantes_. Volume II., bearing date 1755, contains a couple of these--with signature in Gallic orthography, ‘G. Riland’--portraits of peacock-feathered jay and boastful mule, humanised in the text, though strangely wooden in the picture.