It is to be understood that Pinkerton had been, in a sense, pressing me to come from the beginning; depicting his isolation among new acquaintances, "who have none of them your culture," he wrote; expressing his friendship in terms so warm that it sometimes embarrassed me to think how poorly I could echo them; dwelling upon his need for assistance; and the next moment turning about to commend my resolution and press me to remain in Paris. "Only remember, Loudon," he would write, "if you ever _do_ tire of it, there's plenty of work here for you--honest, hard, well-paid work, developing the resources of this practically virgin State. And, of course, I needn't say what a pleasure it would be to me if we were going at it _shoulder to shoulder_." I marvel, looking back, that I could so long have resisted these appeals, and continue to sink my friend's money in a manner that I knew him to dislike. At least, when I did awake to any sense of my position, I awoke to it entirely, and determined not only to follow his counsel for the future, but, even as regards the past, to rectify his losses. For in this juncture of affairs I called to mind that I was not without a possible resource, and resolved, at whatever cost of mortification, to beard the Loudon family in their historic city. In the excellent Scots phrase, I made a moonlight flitting, a thing never dignified, but in my case unusually easy. As I had scarce a pair of boots worth portage I deserted the whole of my effects without a pang. Dijon fell heir to Joan of Arc, the Standard Bearer, and the Musketeers. He was present when I bought and frugally stocked my new portmanteau, and it was at the door of the trunk-shop that I took my leave of him, for my last few hours in Paris must be spent alone. It was alone, and at a far higher figure than my finances warranted, that I discussed my dinner; alone that I took my ticket at St. Lazare; all alone, though in a carriage full of people, that I watched the moon shine on the Seine flood with its tufted isles, on Rouen with her spires, and on the shipping in the harbour of Dieppe. When the first light of the morning called me from troubled slumbers on the deck, I beheld the dawn at first with pleasure; I watched with pleasure the green shores of England rising out of rosy haze: I took the salt air with delight into my nostrils; and then all came back to me--that I was no longer an artist, no longer myself; that I was leaving all I cared for, and returning to all that I detested, the slave of debt and gratitude, a public and a branded failure.