In point offact, I met Strickland before I had been a fortnight in Paris.

I quicklyfound myself a tiny apartment on the fifth floor of a house in the Rue desDames, and for a couple of hundred francs bought at a second-hand dealer'senough furniture to make it habitable. I arranged with the concierge to make mycoffee in the morning and to keep the place clean. Then I went to see my friendDirk Stroeve.

Dirk Stroevewas one of those persons whom, according to your character, you cannot think ofwithout derisive laughter or an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders. Nature hadmade him a buffoon. He was a painter, but a very bad one, whom I had met inRome, and I still remembered his pictures. He had a genuine enthusiasm for thecommonplace. His soul palpitating with love of art, he painted the models whohung about the stairway of Bernini in the Piazza de Spagna, undaunted by theirobvious picturesqueness; and his studio was full of canvases on which wereportrayed moustachioed, large-eyed peasants in peaked hats, urchins in becomingrags, and women in bright petticoats. Sometimes they lounged at the steps of achurch, and sometimes dallied among cypresses against a cloudless sky;sometimes they made love by a Renaissance well-head, and sometimes theywandered through the Campagna by the side of an ox-waggon. They were carefullydrawn and carefully painted. A photograph could not have been more exact. Oneof the painters at the Villa Medici had called him Le Maitre de la Boite aChocoloats. To look at his pictures you would have thought that Monet, Manet,and the rest of the Impressionists had never been.

实际上，我在巴黎住了还不到两个星期就看到思特里克兰德了。

我没有费什么工夫就在达姆路一所房子的五层楼上租到一小间公寓。我花了两三百法郎在一家旧货店购置了几件家具，把屋子布置起来，又同看门的人商量好，叫她每天早晨给我煮咖啡，替我收拾房间。这以后我就去看我的朋友戴尔克·施特略夫。

戴尔克·施特略夫是这样一个人：根据人们不同的性格，有人在想到他的时候鄙夷地一笑，有的则困惑地耸一下肩膀。造物主把他制造成一个滑稽角色。他是一个画家，但他是一个很蹩脚的画家。我是在罗马和他认识的，我始终记得他那时画的画儿。他衷心拜倒在平凡庸俗的脚下。他的灵魂由于对艺术的热爱而悸动着，他描摹悬在斯巴尼亚广场贝尼尼①式楼梯上的一些画幅，一点儿也不觉得这些绘画美得有些失真。他自己画室里的作品张张画的是蓄着小胡须、生着大眼睛、头戴尖顶帽的农民，衣衫破烂但又整齐得体的街头顽童，和穿着花花绿绿的裙子的女人。这些画中人物有时候在教堂门口台阶上闲立，有时候在一片晴朗无云的碧空下的柏树丛中戏逐，有时候在有文艺复兴时期建筑风格的喷泉边调情，也有时候跟在牛车旁边走过意大利田野。这些人物画得非常细致，色彩过于真切。就是摄影师也不能拍出更加逼真的照片来。住在梅迪其别墅的一位画家管施特略夫叫做巧克力糖盒子的大画师②。看了他的画，你会认为莫奈③、马奈④和所有印象派画家从来不曾出现过。

①乔凡尼·罗伦索·贝尼尼（1598—1680），意大利巴洛克派雕塑家、建筑家和画家。

②原文为法语。

③克劳德·莫奈（1840—1926），法国画家。

④埃多瓦·马奈（1832—1883），法国画家。