which is
lost to me forever? You need not fear that I shall become a prey to
misanthropy or schnapps, like old Katie. I should be ashamed to show
myself to Homo, who is looking at me now while I write, with his wise,
sensible, true-hearted eyes. Perhaps he is asking me to send you his
love.

"But to stay out here awhile in solitude will be of equal service to my
slowly-healing breast and to my poor, somewhat discouraged soul. Don't
let yourself be deceived, old Hans, by what our friends try to stuff
into your head: that my anxiety about whether I shall soon be able to
use my hand again in the service of the arts is gnawing at my heart.
More has been injured in this case than a finger-muscle or a joint; my
hopeful confidence has been shattered--that courage and audacity with
which I came to you in the summer. If I had ten sound hands I would
bethink myself ten times before I again sent them to school to you, for
I am as good as convinced that at the very best they would only have
acquired mechanical proficiency; while a true work of art requires much
more, for which they would hardly have the right sort of tools.

"You prophesied this to me in the first hour of our reunion. Then I set
myself up to be wiser than my master. And now can you guess how I found
out that you were right? I know it is mortifying, but I must confess
it. During all the pleasant weeks I passed in your workshop I never
once felt so much myself, never felt myself so 'at the height of my
existence'--as Rossel would call it--as in those moments when I was
bringing an oarless boat safely to shore, and afterward when I was
struggling, hand-to-hand, to defend my life against a furious,
murderous scoundrel.

"That a man maybe a very tolerable bully and desperado, and at the same
time be a great sculptor, your celebrated Florentine predecessor,
Benvenuto, has shown. Though then, to be sure, the days of a nobility
of force were not yet over, and many things were demanded of a complete
man which are now divided among many by our present system of division
of labor. Artistic creation and practical execution are now distinct,
and you were quite right in saying that the clay in which I was called
upon to work was to be found in public life.

"But where shall I find a material that will not melt away under my
hands?

"You would be no worse off in a desert of sand than I am in this
bureaucratic, well-regulated, red-tape civilization of ours, that never
perm