Then he took it into his head to go and copy a picture at the Louvre--an old master; in this he felt he could not go wrong. He obtained the necessary permission, bought a canvas six feet high, and sat himself before a picture by Nicolas Poussin, I think: a group of angelic women carrying another woman though the air up to heaven. They were not very much to his taste, but more so than any others. His chief notion about women in pictures was that they should be very beautiful--since they cannot make themselves agreeable in any other way; and they are not always so in the works of the great masters. At least, _he_ thought not. These are matters of taste, of course. He had no notion of how to divide his canvas into squares--a device by which one makes it easier to get the copy into proper proportion, it seems. He began by sketching the head of the principal woman roughly in the middle of his canvas, and then he wanted to begin painting it at once--he was so impatient. Students, female students especially, came and interested themselves in his work, and some _rapins_ asked him questions, and tried to help him and give him tips. But the more they told him, the more helpless and hopeless he grew. He soon felt conscious he was becoming quite a funny man again--a centre of interest--in a new line; but it gave him no pleasure whatever. After a week of this mistaken drudgery he sat despondent one afternoon on a bench in the Champs Élysées and watched the gay people, and thought himself very down on his luck; he was tired and hot and miserable--it was the beginning of July. If he had known how, he would almost have shed tears. His loneliness was not to be borne, and his longing to feel once more the north had become a chronic ache. A tall, thin, shabby man came and sat by his side, and made himself a cigarette, and hummed a tune--a well-known quartier-latin song--about "Mon Aldegonde, ma blonde," and "Ma Rodogune, ma brune." Barty just glanced at this jovial person and found he didn't look jovial at all, but rather sad and seedy and out at elbows--by no means of the kind that the fair Aldegonde or her dark sister would have much to say to. Also that he wore very strong spectacles, and that his brown eyes, when turned Barty's way, vibrated with a quick, tremulous motion and sideways, as if they had the "gigs." Much moved and excited, Barty got up and put out his hand to the stranger, and said: "Bonjour, Monsieur Bonzig! comment allez-vous?" Bonzig opened his eyes at this well-dressed Briton (for Barty had clothes to last him a French lifetime). "Pardonnez-moi, monsieur--mais je n'ai pas l'honneur de vous remettre!" "Je m'appelle Josselin--de chez Brossard!" "Ah! Mon Dieu, mon cher, mon très-cher!" said Bonzig, and got up and seized Barty's both hands--and all but hugged him.