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and felt himself only at ease within a mile of the Boule-
vard St. Michel. But the curious thing was that he had never
learnt to speak French passably, and he kept in his shabby
clothes bought at La Belle Jardiniere an ineradicably Eng-
lish appearance.
He was a man who would have made a success of life a
century and a half ago when conversation was a passport to
good company and inebriety no bar.
‘I ought to have lived in the eighteen hundreds,’ he said
himself. ‘What I want is a patron. I should have published
my poems by subscription and dedicated them to a noble-
man. I long to compose rhymed couplets upon the poodle
of a countess. My soul yearns for the love of chamber-maids
and the conversation of bishops.’
He quoted the romantic Rolla,
‘Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux.’
He liked new faces, and he took a fancy to Philip, who
seemed to achieve the difficult feat of talking just enough
to suggest conversation and not too much to prevent mono-
logue. Philip was captivated. He did not realise that little
that Cronshaw said was new. His personality in conversa-
tion had a curious power. He had a beautiful and a sonorous
voice, and a manner of putting things which was irresistible
to youth. All he said seemed to excite thought, and often on
the way home Lawson and Philip would walk to and from
one another’s hotels, discussing some point which a chance
word of Cronshaw had suggested. It was disconcerting to
Philip, who had a youthful eagerness for results, that Cron-
shaw’s poetry hardly came up to expectation. It had never