"It's all right for me," said Ishmael at last, "but I expect you'll find it dull after Paris. It must all be so different over there."
"Oh, Paris is Paris, of course, and unlike anything else on earth. It is not a place as much as a state, which is one of its resemblances to heaven. You see I haven't forgotten all my theology."
"I sometimes think," announced Ishmael, firmly believing what he was saying, "that it's time I went about a bit. To London and Paris ... the place can get on quite well without me for a bit."
"My son, be advised by me," said Killigrew gaily; "for good little boys like you this is a better place than gay, wicked cities. Of course, I'm not good--or bad either; it's a distinction that doesn't mean anything to me--but I have to be in Paris for my painting. Can you imagine it, I've been with Diaz and Rousseau? And there's a young fellow who's coming on now that I've seen a lot of called Lepage--Bastien Lepage, who's going to be a wonder. I can tell you, sometimes when I think of the dear old Guv'nor's business, and how he had set his heart on my going into it, I can hardly believe it's true that I've been there, free to do my own work, with those men...."
Killigrew's voice sounded younger in its enthusiasm, more as it had in the old days when he used to speak of Turner.
"I'll bet you're going to be as great as any," cried Ishmael, the old sense of potencies that Killigrew's bounding vitality had always stirred in him awaking again. "How we all used to talk at St. Renny about what we'd do ... d'you remember?"
"Rather. And it's most of it coming true. I was to be a painter and old Carminow a surgeon. I've just heard he's at the Charing Cross hospital."
"And Polkinghorne major? D'you know anything about him? Did he get into his Highland regiment?"
"I heard about him at St. Renny from the old bird. I stopped there last night, you know, to break this devil of a journey. I tell you, Ishmael, it's less of a business getting over to Paris than down here."
"What did Old Tring say about everyone? How was he?"
"Just the same, only thinner on top and fatter below. He told me about Polkinghorne. He went to Italy the year you left, you know. Well, Old Tring told me while he was still there the war broke out, and he enlisted under Garibaldi and was killed in a skirmish just when peace was settled."