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The waiter put their drinks before them on saucers with the price marked in black letters. Theo lit a cigar, Vincent his pipe. Laundry women in black aprons passed, baskets of ironed clothes under their arms; a labourer went by, dangling an unwrapped herring by the tail; there were painters in smocks, with wet canvases strapped to the easel; business men in black derbies and grey checked coats; housewives in cloth slippers, carrying a bottle of wine or a paper of meat; beautiful women with long, flowing skirts, narrow waists, and tiny plumed hats perched forward on their heads.

“It’s a gorgeous parade, isn’t it, Theo?”

“Yes. Paris doesn’t really awaken until the apéritif hour.”

“I’ve been trying to think . . . what is it that makes Paris so marvellous?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. It’s an eternal mystery. It has something to do with French character, I suppose. There’s a pattern of freedom and tolerance here, an easygoing acceptance of life that . . . Hello, here’s a friend of mine I want you to meet. Good evening, Paul; how are you?”

“Very well, thanks, Theo.”

“May I present my brother, Vincent Van Gogh? Vincent, this is Paul Gauguin. Sit down, Paul, and have one of your inevitable absinthes.”

Gauguin raised his absinthe, touched the tip of his tongue to the liqueur and then coated the inside of his mouth with it. He turned to Vincent.

“How do you like Paris, Monsieur Van Gogh?”

“I like it very much.”

“Tiens! C’est curieux. Still, some people do. As for myself, I find it one huge garbage can. With civilization as the garbage.”

“I don’t care much for this cointreau, Theo. Can you suggest something else?”

“Try an absinthe, Monsieur Van Gogh,” put in Gauguin. “That is the only drink worthy of an artist.”

“What do you say, Theo?”

“Why ask me? Suit yourself. Garçon. An absinthe for Monsieur. You seem rather pleased with yourself today, Paul. What’s happened? Sell a canvas?”

“Nothing as sordid as all that, Theo. But I had a charming experience this morning.”

Theo tipped Vincent a wink. “Tell us about it, Paul. Garçon! another absinthe for Monsieur Gauguin.”

Gauguin touched the tip of his tongue to the new absinthe, wetted the inside of his mouth with it, and then began.

“Do you know that blind alley, the Impasse Frenier, which opens on the Rue des Forneaux? Well, five o’clock this morning I heard Mother Fourel, the carter’s wife, scream, ‘Help! My husband has hung himself!’ I leaped out of bed, pulled on a pair of trousers (the proprieties!) grabbed a knife downstairs and cut the rope. The man was dead, but still warm, still burning. I wanted to carry him to his bed. ‘Stop!’ cried Mother Fourel, ‘we must wait for the police!’

“On the other side my house overhangs fifteen yards of market gardener’s bed. ‘Have you a cantaloupe?’ I called to the gardener. ‘Certainly, Monsieur, a ripe one.’ At breakfast I ate my melon without a thought of the man who had hung himself. There is good in life as you see. Beside the poison there is the antidote. I was invited out to luncheon, so I put on my best shirt, expecting to thrill the company. I related the story. Smiling, quite unconcerned, they all asked me for a piece of the rope with which he had hung himself.”

Vincent looked closely at Paul Gauguin. He had the great, black head of a barbarian, with a massive nose that shot down from the corner of his left eye to the right corner of his mouth. His eyes were huge, almond shaped, protruding, invested with a fierce melancholy. Ridges of bone bulged over the eyes, under the eyes, ran down the long cheeks and across the wide chin. He was a giant of a man, with overwhelming brutal vitality.

Theo smiled faintly.

“Paul, I’m afraid you enjoy your sadism a little too much for it to be entirely natural. I’ll have to be going now; I have a dinner engagement. Vincent, will you join me?”

“Let him stay with me, Theo,” said Gauguin. “I want to get acquainted with this brother of yours.”

“Very well. But don’t pour too many absinthes into him. He’s not used them. Garçon. Combien!”

“That brother of yours is all right, Vincent,” said Gauguin. “He’s still afraid to exhibit the younger men, but I suppose Valadon holds him down.”

“He has Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, and Manet on the balcony.”

“True, but where are the Seurats? And the Gauguins? And the Cezannes and Toulouse-Lautrecs? The other men are getting old now and their time is passing.”

“Oh, then you know Toulouse-Lautrec?”

“Henri? Of course! Who doesn’t know him? He’s a damn fine painter, but he’s crazy. He thinks that if he sleeps with five thousand women, he’ll vindicate himself for not being a whole man. Every morning he wakes up with a gnawing inferiority because he has no legs; every night he drowns that inferiority in liquor and a woman’s body. But it’s back with him again the next morning. If he weren’t crazy he’d be one of our best painters. Here’s where we turn in. My studio is on the fourth floor. Look out for that step. The board is broken.”