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XLV

hilip soon realised that the spirit which informed his
Pfriends was Cronshaw’s. It was from him that Lawson
got his paradoxes; and even Clutton, who strained after
individuality, expressed himself in the terms he had insen-
sibly acquired from the older man. It was his ideas that they
bandied about at table, and on his authority they formed
their judgments. They made up for the respect with which
unconsciously they treated him by laughing at his foibles
and lamenting his vices.
‘Of course, poor old Cronshaw will never do any good,’
they said. ‘He’s quite hopeless.’
They prided themselves on being alone in appreciating
his genius; and though, with the contempt of youth for the
follies of middle-age, they patronised him among them-
selves, they did not fail to look upon it as a feather in their
caps if he had chosen a time when only one was there to be
particularly wonderful. Cronshaw never came to Gravier’s.
For the last four years he had lived in squalid conditions
with a woman whom only Lawson had once seen, in a tiny
apartment on the sixth floor of one of the most dilapidated
houses on the Quai des Grands Augustins: Lawson de-
scribed with gusto the filth, the untidiness, the litter.
‘And the stink nearly blew your head off.’
‘Not at dinner, Lawson,’ expostulated one of the others.