You will entirely forgive me when you realize that I wrote you my last letter at a bad time. My drawings weren’t going well, and not knowing which way to turn I began to write. I would certainly have done better to have waited for a better moment, but this way you’ll clearly see that without a doubt I myself belong to that class of people of whom I was speaking to you in my letter, namely to that class of persons who don’t always think about what they’re saying and doing.

That being so, let’s leave it there. Always be sure of this. In the past few days there’s been a change for the better. I’ve just finished at least a dozen drawings, or rather, pencil and pen croquis, which are, it seems to me, already a little better. They vaguely resemble certain drawings by Lançon1 or certain English wood engravings, but even clumsier, more awkward.a They depict, among others, a delivery man, a miner, man sweeping snow, a walk in the snow, old women, type of old man (‘Ferragus’, from Balzac’s L’histoire des treize)2 &c. I’m sending you 2 small ones, ‘On the road’ and ‘In front of the embers’.3 I can clearly see that it’s not good yet; it’s beginning to emerge, though.

I have a model almost every day, an old delivery man or some labourer or lad whom I have pose. Next Sunday I’ll perhaps have one or two soldiers who’ll come to pose. And so, since I’m no longer in a bad mood now, I have a quite different and better idea of you and of the whole world in general.

I’ve also drawn a landscape again, namely a heath,4 which I hadn’t done for a long time. 1v:2

I like landscape very much, but 10 times more these studies of everyday life, sometimes of terrifying truthfulness, such as Gavarni, Henry Monnier,5 Daumier, De Lemud, Henri Pille, T. Schuler, E. Morin, G. Doré (in his Londres, for example),6 A. Lançon, Degroux, Félicien Rops7 &c. &c. have drawn with such mastery.

Now without in any way daring to claim to rise as high as them, nevertheless, by continuing to draw these types of workmen &c., I’m confident of succeeding in becoming more or less capable of working in magazine or book illustration. First and foremost, when I’ll be able to pay more for models, and female models too, I’ll make further progress; I feel it and I know it. And I’ll probably also succeed in being able to do portraits. But that depends on working hard; not a day without a line, as Gavarni used to say.8

So it’s understood that I stay here for the time being, while waiting for you to have something or other to offer me, perhaps. But write to me once in a while. I’m now busy drawing all Bargue’s Exercices au fusain for the 3rd time.

You mentioned to me a change in the composition of the staff at the firm of G&Cie, and of another change in your own position.9

I congratulate you on it, and as for those Messrs G&Cie, I’m inclined to believe that there is occasion to congratulate them, too, on clearing out dead wood. 1v:3

I’ve always thought that Those Gentlemen themselves were moved by a superior and nobler spirit than that of those who have at last just cleared off. Perhaps the position that the latter occupied for so long in the firm, their influence and, since these Messrs G&Cie allowed them to do so, their domination — repelled some other employees, whom these Gentlemen could perhaps have done well to retain, but who, driven to the limit, somehow ended up quitting the service.10

Since you spoke to me vaguely about coming to Paris in the past,11 be sure that I would ask for nothing better than indeed to go there one of these days — if I

was fortunate enough to know that I would find work there to earn at least 100 francs a month — be sure also, however, that since I’ve made a start with drawing, it isn’t in order to leave it at that; consequently I would mainly try to continue and to make progress in that direction. Drawing figures and scenes of everyday life requires not only knowledge of drawing as a craft, but in addition, rigorous study of literature, physiognomy &c., which are difficult to acquire.