The Conscientious Burglar.
By Grant Allen.
uy Lethbridge had got into debt. That was reprehensible, of course; but when we were very young, most of us did the same thing; and in Guy's case, at least, there were extenuating circumstances. When a fellow's twenty-four, and has been brought up like a gentleman, he's apt to fall into the familiar fallacy that "we must live;" and if he has nothing to live upon, why then he lives upon other people. Now, Guy Lethbridge was a painter, without visible means of support except his art; and he glided into debt by a natural and easy transition which even that sternest of censors, the judge of the Bankruptcy Court, might well have condoned as next door to inevitable.
"With a knapsack and an easel."
The facts of the case were these. Guy had gone over to Germany with a knapsack on his back, an easel in his hands, and a pipe and a few pounds in his trousers pocket. He had no friends to speak of in those days, for his father was dead, and his mother, good lady, in her lodgings in Bayswater, could no more have sent her son a five-pound note from her slender pension, than she could have sent him the Koh-i-noor or the Order of the White Elephant. But Guy went abroad, none the less, with the reckless faith of the Salvationist or the impecunious artist. He meant to stay on the Rhine as long as his money lasted; "and then, you know, my dear fellow, I can smuggle myself across anyhow, in a cattle boat or something; and arrive with a six-pence and an immortal work at St. Catherine's Docks some fine summer day, at six o'clock in the morning." What a blessed thing it is, to be sure, to be born into this world with the easy-going, happy-go-lucky, artistic temperament!
So Guy went to Königswinter, with a glimpse by the way at Brussels, Aix, and Cologne; and settled himself down, pipe, easel, and all, to summer quarters at the bright and sunny Berliner-Hof. There, he worked really hard, for he was no saunterer by nature; his impecuniosity arose, strange to say, neither from want of industry nor want of talent, but from pure force of circumstances. There's no sillier blunder on earth, indeed, than to believe that if a man doesn't succeed in life he must needs be either an idler or a bungler. Only fools imagine that industry and ability can command success; wise men know well that opportunity and luck count at least as equally important. Guy Lethbridge's time had not yet come. He painted all summer up and down the Rhine, making Königswinter his headquarters, and dropping down by boat or rail from day to day to various points on either bank that took his fancy. As for black and white, his quiver was full of them. The Drachenfels from the North, the Drachenfels from the South; the Rheinstein from above, the Rheinstein from below, the Rheinstein from St. Clement's—he sketched them
