The breakfast was ordered at Lavenue's, where no one
need be ashamed to entertain even the master; the table
was laid in the garden; I had chosen the bill of fare
myself; on the wine question we held a council of war,
with the most fortunate results; and the talk, as soon
as the master laid aside his painful English, became
fast and furious. There were a few interruptions,
indeed, in the way of toasts. The master's health had
to be drunk, and he responded in a little well-turned
speech, full of neat allusions to my future and to the
United States; my health followed; and then my father's
must not only be proposed and drunk, but a full report
must be despatched to him at once by cablegram--an
extravagance which was almost the means of the master's
dissolution. Choosing Corporal John to be his
confidant (on the ground, I presume, that he was
already too good an artist to be any longer an American
except in name) he summed up his amazement in one oft-
repeated formula--"C'EST BARBARE!" Apart from these
genial formalities, we talked, talked of art, and
talked of it as only artists can.
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