and private, was crowded; Paris was glutted with works of art. Stefan
faced the prospect of speedy starvation if he could not dispose of
another canvas. He had enough for a summer in Brittany, after which, if
the dealers could do nothing for him, he was stranded. Nevertheless, he
enjoyed his holiday light-heartedly, confident that his two large
pictures could not long fail to be appreciated. Returning to Paris in
September, however, he was dismayed to find his favorite dealers
uninterested in his canvases, and disinclined to harbor them longer.
Portraits and landscapes, they told him, were in much demand, but
fantasies, no. His sweeping groups of running, flying figures against
stormy skies, or shoals of mermaids hurrying down lanes of the deep sea,
did not appeal to the fashionable taste of the year. Something more
languorous, more subdued, or, on the other hand, more "chic," was
demanded.

In a high rage of disgust, Stefan hired a fiacre, and bore his children
defiantly home to their birthplace. Sitting in his studio like a ruffled
bird upon a spoiled hatching, he reviewed the fact that he had 325 francs
in the world, that the rent of his attic was overdue, and that his
pictures had never been so unmarketable as now.

At this point his one intimate man friend, Adolph Jensen, a Swede,
appeared as the deus ex machine. He had, he declared, an elder brother in
New York, an art dealer. This brother had just written him, describing
the millionaires who bought his pictures and bric-a-brac. His shop was
crowded with them. Adolph's brother was shrewd and hard to please, but
let his cher Stefan go himself to New York with his canvases, impress the
brother with his brilliance and the beauty of his work, and, undoubtedly,
his fortune would at once be made. The season in New York was in the
winter. Let Stefan go at once, by the fastest boat, and be first in the