atter? The people here been impertinent?'

Prevost shook his head. 'We never were in a house, my lord, where they
were more obliging. It is something much worse.'

'Nothing wrong about your fish, I hope? Well, what is it?'

'Leander, my lord, has been dressing dinners for a week: dinners, I will
be bound to say, which were never equalled in the Imperial kitchen,
and the duke has never made a single observation, or sent him a single
message. Yesterday, determined to outdo even himself, he sent up some
_escalopes de laitances de carpes a la Bellamont_. In my time I have
seen nothing like it, my lord. Ask Philippon, ask Dumoreau, what they
thought of it! Even the Englishman, Smit, who never says anything,
opened his mouth and exclaimed; as for the marmitons, they were
breathless, and I thought Achille, the youth of whom I spoke to you, my
lord, and who appears to me to be born with the true feeling, would have
been overcome with emotion. When it was finished, Leander retired to
his room--I attended him--and covered his face with his hands. Would you
believe it, my lord! Not a word; not even a message. All this morning
Leander has waited in the last hope. Nothing, absolutely nothing! How
can he compose when he is not appreciated? Had he been appreciated, he
would to-day not only have repeated the _escalopes a la Bellamont_, but
perhaps even invented what might have outdone it. It is unheard of,
my lord. The late lord Monmouth would have sent for Leander the very
evening, or have written to him a beautiful letter, which would have
been preserved in his family; M. de Sidonia would have sent him a
tankard from his table. These things in themselves are nothing; but they
prove to a man of genius that he is understood. Had Leander been in the
Imperial kitchen, or even with the Emperor of Russia, he would have been
decorated!'

'Where is he?' said Lord Eskdale.

'He is alone in the cook's room.'

'I will go and say a word to him.'

Alone, in the cook's room, gazing in listless vacancy on the fire,
that fire which, under his influence, had often achieved so many
master-works, was the great artist who was not appreciated. No longer
suffering under mortification, but overwhelmed by that exhaustion which
follows acute sensibility and the over-tension of the creative faculty,
he looked round as Lord Eskdale entered, and when he perceived who was
his visitor, he rose immediately, bowed very low, and then sighed.

'Prevost think