Deciding to become a painter, he entered the studio of Gerome in Paris, where he enjoyed the life of the artists, but soon found that whatever talent he might have did not lie in that direction. He gives us an account of this in his lively and humorous poem, ``The Happy Artists.'' ``I scanned the world through printed symbol swart, And through the beggar's rags I strove to see The inner man. I looked unceasingly With my cold mind and with my burning heart.'' In this final line, we have the key to his nature. Few writers have better understood their deepest selves. Heidenstam could never be satisfied by surface. It may, however, be noted that his gift for color and imagery must have been greatly stimulated by his stay in Paris.

The first result of Heidenstam's long sojourn abroad was a volume of poems, Pilgrimage and Wander Years (Vallfart och vandringsar), published in 1888. It was a brilliant debut, so much so indeed that it aroused a new vitality in the younger poets, as did Byron's Childe Harold. Professor Fredrik Bo ^ o ^ k, Sweden's foremost critic of the period, acclaims it as follows: ``In this we have the verse of a painter; strongly colorful, plastic, racy, vivid. In a bold, sometimes careless, form there is nothing academic; all is seen and felt and experienced, the observation is sharp and the imagination lively. The young poet painter reproduces the French life of the streets; he tells stories of the Thousand and One Nights, and conjures up before us the bazaars of Damascus. In the care-free indolence of the East he sees the last reflection of the old happy existence, and for that reason he loves it. And yet amid all the gay hedonism in Pilgrimage and Wander-Years is a cycle of short poems,'' Thoughts in Loneliness ``, filled with brooding, melancholy, and sombre longing.''