I have no great respect for
those who want lookers-on to heed them whenever they are scratched.
But M. Rameau seems to me one of those writers very common nowadays, in
France and even in England; writers who have never read anything worth
studying, and are, of course, presumptuous in proportion to their
ignorance. I should not have thought an artist like yourself could have
recognized an artist in a M. Rameau who despises Tasso without knowing
Italian."

Graham spoke bitterly; he was once more jealous.

"Are you not an artist yourself? Are you not a writer? M. Savarin told
me you were a distinguished man of letters."

"M. Savarin flatters me too much. I am not an artist, and I have a great
dislike to that word as it is now hackneyed and vulgarized in England
and in France. A cook calls himself an artist; a tailor does the same; a
man writes a gaudy melodrame, a spasmodic song, a sensational novel,
and straightway he calls Himself an artist, and indulges in a pedantic
jargon about 'essence' and 'form,' assuring us that a poet we can
understand wants essence, and a poet we can scan wants form. Thank
heaven, I am not vain enough to call myself artist. I have written some
very dry lucubrations in periodicals, chiefly political, or critical
upon other subjects than art. But why, a propos of M. Rameau, did you
ask me that question respecting myself?"

"Because much in your conversation," answered Isaura, in rather a
mournful tone, "made me suppose you had more sympathies with art and its
cultivators than you cared to avow; and if you had such sympathies,
you would comprehend what a relief it is to a poor aspirant to art like
myself to come into communication with those who devote themselves to
any art distinct from the common pursuits of the world, what a relief
it is to escape from the ordinary talk of society. There is a sort of
instinctive freemasonry among us, including masters and disciples; and
one art has a fellowship with other arts. Mine is but song and music,
yet I feel attracted towards a sculptor, a painter, a romance-writer, a
poet, as much as towards a singer, a musician. Do you understand why
I cannot contemn M. Rameau as you do? I differ from his tastes in
literature; I do not much admire such of his writings as I have read;
I grant that he overestimates his own genius, whatever that be,--yet I
like to converse with him. He is a struggler upwards, though with weak
wings, or with erring footsteps, like myse