slave than the man who thinks himself free while he
is not.

"A man has only to declare that he is free, and the next moment he feels
the conditions to which he is subject. Let him venture to declare that
he is under conditions, and then he will feel that he is free.

"Against great advantages in another, there are no means of defending
ourselves except love.

"There is something terrible in the sight of a highly-gifted man lying
under obligations to a fool.

"'No man is a hero to his valet,' the proverb says. But that is only
because it requires a hero to recognize a hero. The valet will probably
know how to value the valet-hero.

"Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius
is not immortal.

"The greatest men are connected with their own century always through
some weakness.

"One is apt to regard people as more dangerous than they are.

"Fools and modest people are alike innocuous. It is only your half-fools
and your half-wise who are really and truly dangerous.

"There is no better deliverance from the world than through art; and a
man can form no surer bond with it than through art.

"Alike in the moment of our highest fortune and our deepest necessity,
we require the artist.

"The business of art is with the difficult and the good.

"To see the difficult easily handled, gives us the feeling of the
impossible.

"Difficulties increase the nearer we are to our end.

"Sowing is not so difficult as reaping."

CHAPTER VI

The very serious discomfort which this visit had caused to Charlotte was
in some way compensated to her through the fuller insight which it had
enabled her to gain into her daughter's character. In this, her
knowledge of the world was of no slight service to her. It was not the
first time that so singular a character had come across her, although
she had never seen any in which the unusual features were so largely
developed; and she had had experience enough to show her that such
persons, after having felt the discipline of life, after having gone
through something of it, and been in intercourse with older people, may
come out at last really charming and amiable; the selfishness may soften
and eager restless activity find a definite direction for itself. And
therefore, as a mother, Charlotte was able to endure the appearance of
symptoms which for others might perhaps have been unpleasing, from a
sense that where strangers only desire to enjoy, or