The interpreting
friend finally suggested that the article should be written while Bok
was in Paris; that he should be notified when the manuscript was ready,
that he should then appear with the actual money in hand in French
notes; and that Dumas should give Bok the manuscript when Bok handed
Dumas the money.
"After I count it," said Dumas.
This was the last straw!
"Pray ask him," Bok suggested to the interpreter, "what assurance I have
that he will deliver the manuscript to me after he has the money." The
friend protested against translating this thrust, but Bok insisted, and
Dumas, not knowing what was coming, insisted that the message be given
him. When it was, the man was a study; he became livid with rage.
"But," persisted Bok, "say to Monsieur Dumas that I have the same
privilege of distrusting him as he apparently has of distrusting me."
And Bok can still see the violent gesticulations of the storming French
author, his face burning with passionate anger, as the two left him.
Edward Bok now sincerely hoped that his encounters with the absence of a
law that has been met were at an end!
Rosa Bonheur, the painter of "The Horse Fair," had been represented to
Bok as another recluse who was as inaccessible as Kate Greenaway. He had
known of the painter's intimate relations with the ex-Empress Eugenie,
and desired to get these reminiscences. Everybody dissuaded him; but
again taking a French friend he made the journey to Fontainebleau, where
the artist lived in a chateau in the little village of By.
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