When I made my hit with my Exhibition of the "Artistic Joke," du Maurier, to my surprise, turned sharply round to me one night in the cab and said, "My dear Furniss, I must be honest with you--I hate you, I loathe you, I detest you!" [Illustration: DU MAURIER'S SOUVENIR DE FONTAINEBLEAU. _From "Punch."_] "Thanks, awfully, my dear fellow! But why?" "Ah!" he said, "your success is too great. When I get the return you send me in the morning, showing me the number of people that have been to your Exhibition, the tremendous takings at the turnstiles, the number of albums subscribed for, the number of pictures you have sold, I cannot work. I go on to Hampstead Heath to walk off my jealousy; when I come in to lunch I find your first telegram, telling me you have made L80 that morning. I walk out again, and looking down upon London, although I shake my fist at the whole place, my wrath is for you alone. I come in to tea to find another telegram--you have made L100! How can I sit down and scratch away on a piece of paper when you are making a fortune in a week?" This nearly took my breath away. "My dear du Maurier," I replied, "I feel hurt--seriously, irrevocably. I shall always feel degraded in your eyes. Of course you are the victim of a practical joke." Du Maurier pulled from his pocket one of my supposed returns. It was an imitation of printing, with the amounts filled in. "This is the kind of thing I get every morning." "Why, of course, it is written, not printed. That is the work of the irrepressible practical joker. But it makes no difference, du Maurier; if you thought that I would be such a cad as to send you these returns, I cannot see how we can ever be great friends." Although as du Maurier believed for a time I had the necessary vulgarity of the "bloated millionaire," to use his own words, we were never much more than acquaintances--although very pleasant acquaintances--and I believe du Maurier reciprocated the kind feeling I had towards him. Du Maurier rarely forgave a satirical thrust at his expense. His dislike for Mr. Whistler on this account is well known to all the early readers of "Trilby," and he often related with unconcealed glee a remark he once made to Whistler. It appears they had not met for a long period, during which du Maurier with his satirical pictures on the aesthetic craze, published in _Punch_, and Whistler with his "symphonies" and "harmonies" on canvas, exhibited in the Law Courts, had both increased their reputation. "Hullo, Kiki!" cried Whistler. "I'm told that your work in _Punch_ is the making of some men. You have actually invented Tomkins! Why, he never would have existed but for you! Ha! ha! how on earth did you do it?" "Look here, Jimmy, if you don't look out, by Jove, I'll invent you!" How Kiki--du Maurier--carried out his threat in "Trilby," and what resulted from it, all the world knows.