“Perhaps we weren't so bad,” I suggested.
“Don't let me depress you,” said he. “We were both Anglo-Saxons, anyway, and the only redeeming feature to-day is another.”
The thought of my quest, a moment driven out by this rencounter, revived in my mind. “Who is he?” I cried. “Tell me about him.”
“What, the Redeeming Feature?” said he. “Well, he's a very pleasing creature, rather dim, and dull, and genteel, but really pleasing. He is very British, though, the artless Briton! Perhaps you'll find him too much so for the transatlantic nerves. Come to think of it, on the other hand, you ought to get on famously. He is an admirer of your great republic in one of its (excuse me) shoddiest features; he takes in and sedulously reads a lot of American papers. I warned you he was artless.”
“What papers are they?” cried I.
“San Francisco papers,” said he. “He gets a bale of them about twice a week, and studies them like the Bible. That's one of his weaknesses; another is to be incalculably rich. He has taken Masson's old studio—you remember?—at the corner of the road; he has furnished it regardless of expense, and lives there surrounded with vins fins and works of art. When the youth of to-day goes up to the Caverne des Brigands to make punch—they do all that we did, like some nauseous form of ape (I never appreciated before what a creature of tradition mankind is)—this Madden follows with a basket of champagne. I told him he was wrong, and the punch tasted better; but he thought the boys liked the style of the thing, and I suppose they do. He is a very good-natured soul, and a very melancholy, and rather a helpless. O, and he has a third weakness which I came near forgetting. He paints. He has never been taught, and he's past thirty, and he paints.”
“How?” I asked.
