Bayonne for his home—at No. 6, Impasse Ronsin in Paris—eight days after my arrival. I remained six weeks in Bayonne, and he did not leave the town until the day after my departure. His friends chaffed him about this constantly protracted delay, but he replied with his usual far-away voice: "There is a fold in the cloak of my Saint Martin which is not yet finished." That never-completed fold almost became a proverb afterwards.

I returned to Beaucourt with my brother-in-law, and was overjoyed at being once more near my mother.... Alas, during my absence, she had not only gone on with the building of the great greenhouses, but had started upon a luxurious piggery, large enough for hundreds of pigs, and I heard she had been with an architect to an estate near Mulhausen, where she had inspected the famous model farm of a German prince, an exact replica of which she wanted to have built at Beaucourt.

Twice a week I received painting lessons by post. I sent my work to M. Steinheil, in Paris, and he returned it to me duly corrected and with pages of comment, which I eagerly read. The "Parisian painter," as my mother said, "had already a place in my thoughts."