This was the region--Chad had been quite
distinct about it--in which the best French, and many other
things, were to be learned at least cost, and in which all sorts
of clever fellows, compatriots there for a purpose, formed an
awfully pleasant set. The clever fellows, the friendly countrymen
were mainly young painters, sculptors, architects, medical
students; but they were, Chad sagely opined, a much more
profitable lot to be with--even on the footing of not being quite
one of them--than the "terrible toughs" (Strether remembered the
edifying discrimination) of the American bars and banks
roundabout the Opera. Chad had thrown out, in the communications
following this one--for at that time he did once in a while
communicate--that several members of a band of earnest workers
under one of the great artists had taken him right in, making him
dine every night, almost for nothing, at their place, and even
pressing him not to neglect the hypothesis of there being as much
"in him" as in any of them. There had been literally a moment at
which it appeared there might be something in him; there had been
at any rate a moment at which he had written that he didn't know
but what a month or two more might see him enrolled in some
atelier.
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