When word of the successes of certain French portraitists in America began to filter back to France, Feuille resolved to emigrate. He inherited a modest sum after the death of his father, sold all he possessed (which didn’t add up to much) and bought a passage to New Orleans, determined to establish himself in the New World. His emigration did not, however, mark the slightest upturn in his fortunes—if anything they worsened. He was afflicted, he complained, by a profound timidity that prevented him from making the acquaintances and friendships required to prosper in his trade. To make matters worse, he had lost a good deal of his inheritance, such as it was, playing cards during his passage across the Atlantic. Upon his arrival he discovered a compatriot, Jean Joseph Vaudechamp, had arrived from France only a month earlier and set himself up in a studio in the city’s French quarter. Moreover, unlike himself, Vaudechamp had arrived with a benign temperament and substantial capital: he had placed advertisements in the Orleans Gazette boasting of his renown in the royal houses of Europe, and had furnished and decorated his quarters in the style of the artist’s studios of Paris, with a divan, vermilion silk-screened wallpaper, ancien régime furnishings, velvet drapery, and, on the walls, a gilt-framed portrait of a plump young woman—his sister, although the astute Vaudechamp hinted to prospective customers that it was, in fact, a noble woman for whom he had suffered an unrequited passion.

Feuille had, in the several weeks since his arrival, spent almost all that remained of his father’s wealth and was now on the verge of ruin. All was lost, he said, including his honor, for even if he had the money to make the return passage to France, it would be as a failure.

I’d had occasion, in the course of my life as Joubert, to become acquainted with many unfortunates who had suffered the most accursed fates. None of them had borne their burdens with such lack of grace. I ventured to remark that perhaps not all was lost, that if he so chose he might discern silver linings to the clouds that palled his horizons. No, he continued relentlessly, on the contrary—everything, everything was lost. He was damned, he cried, his head in his hands, cursed and damned, and did not wish to live another day.