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payment he borrowed fifty francs from Philip every now
and then: it was a little more expensive than if Philip had
paid for the sittings in the usual way; but gave the Spaniard
a satisfactory feeling that he was not earning his living in a
degrading manner. His nationality made Philip regard him
as a representative of romance, and he asked him about Se-
ville and Granada, Velasquez and Calderon. But Miguel bad
no patience with the grandeur of his country. For him, as
for so many of his compatriots, France was the only country
for a man of intelligence and Paris the centre of the world.
‘Spain is dead,’ he cried. ‘It has no writers, it has no art,
it has nothing.’
Little by little, with the exuberant rhetoric of his race, he
revealed his ambitions. He was writing a novel which he
hoped would make his name. He was under the influence of
Zola, and he had set his scene in Paris. He told Philip the sto-
ry at length. To Philip it seemed crude and stupid; the naive
obscenity—c’est la vie, mon cher, c’est la vie, he cried—the
naive obscenity served only to emphasise the convention-
ality of the anecdote. He had written for two years, amid
incredible hardships, denying himself all the pleasures of
life which had attracted him to Paris, fighting with starva-
tion for art’s sake, determined that nothing should hinder
his great achievement. The effort was heroic.
‘But why don’t you write about Spain?’ cried Philip. ‘It
would be so much more interesting. You know the life.’
‘But Paris is the only place worth writing about. Paris is
life.’
One day he brought part of the manuscript, and in his

Of Human Bondage