IV. FONTAINEBLEAU 301

Mark’s Place, it felt like the first practical scene of a pantomime, after the transformation, and before the business begins. But I had been extremely dull under Mount Aventine; and did not, to my surprise, feel at all disposed to be dull here,-but somewhat amused, and with a pleasant feeling of things being really at last all right, for me at least; though it wasn’t as grand as Peckwater, nor as pretty as St. Mark’s Place. Anyhow, I was down to Croydon level again in the world; and might do what I liked in my own lodgings, and hadn’t any Collections¹ to get ready for.

62. The first thing I did was to go to the library and choose a book to work at. After due examination, I bought Agassiz’ Poissons Fossiles!² and set myself to counting of scales and learning of hard names,-thinking, as some people do still, that in that manner I might best advance in geology. Also I supplied myself with some Captain Marryat;³ and some beautiful new cakes of colour wherewith to finish a drawing, in Turner’s grandest manner, of the Château of Amboise at sunset, with the moon rising in the distance, and shining through a bridge.

The Poissons Fossiles turned out a most useful purchase, enabling me finally to perceive, after steady work on them, that Agassiz was a mere blockhead to have paid for all that good drawing of the nasty ugly things, and that it didn’t matter a stale herring to any mortal whether they had any names or not.

For any positive or useful purpose, I could not more utterly have wasted my time; but it was no small gain to know that time spent in that sort of work was wasted; and that to have caught a chub in the Avon, and learned how to cook it spicily and herbaceously, so as to have pleased Izaak Walton, if the odour of it could reach him in the Anglers’ Paradise, would have been a better result

¹ [See above, p. 193.]

² [For particulars of this book, see Cestus of Aglaia, § 109 (Vol. XIX. p. 154 n.).]

³ [Compare above, pp. 103, 200.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]