ors, or that he had any illusions with
regard to the number of his admirers (he could never so far have
deceived himself as to believe he was popular); but I may at least
affirm that adverse criticism, as I had occasion to perceive later,
ruffled him visibly but little, that he had an air of thinking it quite
natural he should be offensive to many minds, and that he very seldom
talked about the newspapers, which, by the way, were always very stupid
in regard to the author of _Beltraffio_. Of course he may have thought
about them--the newspapers--night and day; the only point I wish to make
is that he did n't show it; while, at the same time, he did n't strike
one as a man who was on his guard. I may add that, as regards his hope
of making the work on which he was then engaged the best of his books,
it was only partly carried out. That place belongs, incontestably, to
_Beltraffio_, in spite of the beauty of certain parts of its successor.
I am pretty sure, however, that he had, at the moment of which I speak,
no sense of failure; he was in love with his idea, which was indeed
magnificent, and though for him, as, I suppose, for every artist, the
act of execution had in it as much torment as joy, he saw his work
growing a little every day and filling-out the largest plan he had yet
conceived. "I want to be truer than I have ever been," he said, settling
himself on his back, with his hands clasped behind his head; "I want to
give an impression of life itself. No, you may say what you will, I have
always arranged things too much, always smoothed them down and rounded
them off and tucked them in,--done everything to them that life does n't
do. I have been a slave to the old superstitions."

"You a slave, my dear Mark Ambient? You have the freest imagination of
our day!"

"All the more shame to me to have done some of the things I have! The
reconciliation of the two women in _Ginistrella_, for instance, which
could never really have taken place. That sort of thing is ignoble;
I blush when I think of it! This new affair must be a golden vessel,
filled with the purest distillation of the actual; and oh, how it
bothers me, the shaping of the vase--the hammering of the metal! I have
to hammer it so fine, so smooth; I don't do more than an inch or two a
day. And all the while I have to be so careful not to let a drop of the
liquor escape! When I see the kind of things that Life does, I despair
of ever catching her peculiar trick.