creature," said I, compassionately, "but raffle not your lovely plumage
too roughly; the bars of your cage are not the less impassable that they
are invisible. You _shall_ love me, and you _shall_ be mine!"

To these rapturous fancies there now succeeded the far less captivating
thought of Mrs. Keats, and an approaching interview. Can any reader
explain why it is, that one sits in quiet admiration of some old woman
by Teniers or Holbein, and never experiences any chagrin or impatience
at trials which, if only represented in life, would be positively
odious? Why is it that art transcends nature, and that ugliness in
canvas is more endurable than ugliness in the flesh? Now, for my own
part, I'd rather have faced a whole gallery of the Dutch school, from
Van Eyck to Verbagen, than have confronted that one old lady who sat
awaiting me in No. 12.

Twice as I sat at my breakfast did Francois put in his head, look at me,
and retire without a word. "What is the matter? What do you mean?" cried
I, impatiently, at the third intrusion.

"It is madam that wishes to know when monsieur will be at leisure to go
upstairs to her."

I almost bounded on my chair with passion. How was I, I would ask, to
maintain any portion of that dignity with which I ought to surround
myself if exposed to such demands as this? This absurd old woman would
tear off every illusion in which I draped myself. What availed all the
romance a rich fancy could conjure up, when that wicked old enchantress
called me to her presence, and in a voice of thunder said, "Strip off
these masqueradings, Potts, I know the whole story." "Ay, but," thought
I, "she cannot do so; of me and my antecedents she knows positively
nothing." "Halt there!" interposes Conscience; "it is quite enough to
pronounce the coin base, without being able to say at what mint it was
fabricated. She knows you, Potts, she knows you."

There is one great evil in castle-building, and I have thought very long
and anxiously, and I must own fruitlessly, over how to meet it: it is
that one never can get a lease of the ground to build on. One is always
like an Irish cottier, a tenant at will, likely to be turned out at a
moment's notice, and dispossessed without pity or compassion. The same
language applies to each: "You know well, my good fellow, you had no
right to be there; pack up and be off!" It's no use saying that it was
a bit of waste land unfenced and untilled; that, until you took it in
han