right, but Roderick was right too, for the success of his statue
was not to have been foreseen; it partook, really, of the miraculous. He
never surpassed it afterwards, and a good judge here and there has been
known to pronounce it the finest piece of sculpture of our modern
era. To Rowland it seemed to justify superbly his highest hopes of his
friend, and he said to himself that if he had invested his happiness
in fostering a genius, he ought now to be in possession of a boundless
complacency. There was something especially confident and masterly in
the artist's negligence of all such small picturesque accessories
as might serve to label his figure to a vulgar apprehension. If it
represented the father of the human race and the primal embodiment of
human sensation, it did so in virtue of its look of balanced physical
perfection, and deeply, eagerly sentient vitality. Rowland, in fraternal
zeal, traveled up to Carrara and selected at the quarries the most
magnificent block of marble he could find, and when it came down to
Rome, the two young men had a "celebration." They drove out to Albano,
breakfasted boisterously (in their respective measure) at the inn, and
lounged away the day in the sun on the top of Monte Cavo. Roderick's
head was full of ideas for other works, which he described with infinite
spirit and eloquence, as vividly as if they were ranged on their
pedestals before him. He had an indefatigable fancy; things he saw in
the streets, in the country, things he heard and read, effects he saw
just missed or half-expressed in the works of others, acted upon his
mind as a kind of challenge, and he was terribly restless until, in some
form or other, he had taken up the glove and set his lance in rest.

The Adam was put into marble, and all the world came to see it. Of the
criticisms passed upon it this history undertakes to offer no record;
over many of them the two young men had a daily laugh for a month, and
certain of the formulas of the connoisseurs, restrictive or indulgent,
furnished Roderick with a permanent supply of humorous catch-words. But
people enough spoke flattering good-sense to make Roderick feel as if
he were already half famous. The statue passed formally into Rowland's
possession, and was paid for as if an illustrious name had been chiseled
on the pedestal. Poor Roderick owed every franc of the money. It was not
for this, however, but because he was so gloriously in the mood, that,
denying himse