could have sold it for five thousand francs in 1880, fifty thousand in
1890. Does the idea appeal to you?"

But as most keepers of restaurants are practical and unimaginative, and
withal close bargainers, at the end of a week Rantoul generally was
forced to seek a new sitter.

"What a privilege it is to be poor!" he would then exclaim
enthusiastically to Herkimer. "It awakens all the perceptions; hunger
makes the eye keener. I can see colors to-day that I never saw before.
And to think that if Sherman had never gotten it in his head to march to
the sea I should never have experienced this inspiration! But, old
fellow, we have so short a time to be poor. We must exhibit nothing yet.
We are lucky. We are poor. We can feel."

On the subject of traditions he was at his best.

"Shakspere is the curse of the English drama," he would declare, with a
descending gesture which caused all the little glasses to rattle their
alarm. "Nothing will ever come out of England until his influence is
discounted. He was a primitive, a Preraphælite. He understood nothing of
form, of composition. He was a poet who wandered into the drama as a
sheep strays into the pasture of the bulls, a colorist who imagines he
can be a sculptor. The influence of Victoria sentimentalized the whole
artistic movement in England, made it bourgeois, and flavored it with
mint sauce. Modern portraiture has turned the galleries into an
exhibition of wax works. What is wrong with painting to-day--do you
know?"

"_Allons_, tell us!" cried two or three, while others, availing