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Page Three

my throat. Without facing us the dealer said:

"I know why you are here. Even If the artist were Rembrandt, ask him to please leave. What I need now is clients, not any more artists."

Then we did start homeward. Just before we were about to cross over the Seine at the Pont Neuf, I stopped to talk with a mutual friend of ours. The artist, however, moved on ahead. Half way across the bridge he threw all of his paintings squarely into the river. We ran to him, greatly alarmed. I must admit that I felt he was so disconsolate he might follow his paintings. But I was surprised...He was elated!

"Romare", he said, "turn around and see all the people looking at my paintings. There are more people seeing my work now than if even I had an exhibition at the Louvre".

And, indeed, there were hundreds of people on all the bridges down stream, who had stopped on their way home to watch this armada of paintings floating on the current of that historic river. God knows where those paintings ever ended up, but I do know that my friend returned to the States shortly afterwards--that is, following the Paris exhibit he so longed for. Perhaps he made a wise choice in liberating himself from the daily ordeal of being an artist; but, then, only he can know for sure.

I needed a bit of refreshment after what had happened, and I stopped at the Dome where I ran into a Turkish poet. Sometimes when we sat together he would translate poems from the Turkish of a friend of his named Nazim Hikmet, and I would help him with his American-English pronunciation. The poet told me that Hikmet had spent many years in prison for his