"Mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Je pense à vous si souvent, et à Ouittebé! comme vous êtes changé--et quel beau garçon vous êtes! Qui vous aurait reconnu! Dieu de Dieu--c'est un rêve! Je n'en reviens pas!" etc., etc.... And they walked off together, and told the other each an epitome of his history since they parted; and dined together cheaply, and spent a happy evening walking up and down the boulevards, and smoking many cigarettes--from the Madeleine to the Porte St.-Martin and back--again and again. [Illustration: "'BONJOUR, MONSIEUR BONZIG'"] "Non, mon cher Josselin," said Bonzig, in answer to a question of Barty's--"non, I have not yet seen the sea ..; it will come in time. But at least I am no longer a damned usher (un sacré pion d'études); I am an artist--un peintre de marines--at last! It is a happy existence. I fear my talent is not very imposing, but my perseverance is exceptional, and I am only forty-five. Anyhow, I am able to support myself--not in splendor, certainly; but my wants are few and my health is perfect. I will put you up to many things, my dear boy.... We will storm the citadel of fame together...." Bonzig had a garret somewhere, and painted in the studio of a friend, not far from Barty's lodging. This friend, one Lirieux, was a very clever young man--a genius, according to Bonzig. He drew illustrations on wood with surprising quickness and facility and verve, and painted little oil-pictures of sporting life--a garde champêtre in a wood with his dog, or with his dog on a dusty road, or crossing a stream, or getting over a stile, and so forth. The dog was never left out; and these things he would sell for twenty, thirty, even fifty francs. He painted very quick and very well. He was also a capital good fellow, industrious and cultivated and refined, and full of self-respect. Next to his studio he had a small bedroom which he shared with a younger brother, who had just got a small government appointment that kept him at work all day, in some ministère. In this studio Bonzig painted his marines--still helping himself from _La France Maritime_, as he used to do at Brossard's. He was good at masts and cordage against an evening sky--"l'heure où le jaune de Naples rentre dans la nature," as he called it. He was also excellent at foam, and far-off breakers, and sea-gulls, but very bad at the human figure--sailors and fishermen and their wives. Sometimes Lirieux would put one in for him with a few dabs. As soon as Bonzig had finished a picture, which didn't take very long, he carried it round, still wet, to the small dealers, bearing it very carefully aloft, so as not to smudge it. Sometimes (if there were a sailor by Lirieux) he would get five or even ten francs for it; and then it was "Mon Aldegonde" with him all the rest of the day; for success always took the form, in his case, of nasally humming that amorous refrain. But it very often happened that he was dumb, poor fellow--no supper, no song!