tivated--in very bad company.
Are they all like that, all the men of genius? There are a great many
artists here who hammer away at their trade with exemplary industry; in
fact I am surprised at their success in reducing the matter to a steady,
daily grind: but I really don't think that one of them has his exquisite
quality of talent. It is in the matter of quantity that he has broken
down. The bottle won't pour; he turns it upside down; it 's no use!
Sometimes he declares it 's empty--that he has done all he was made to
do. This I consider great nonsense; but I would nevertheless take him on
his own terms if it was only I that was concerned. But I keep thinking
of those two praying, trusting neighbors of yours, and I feel wretchedly
like a swindler. If his working mood came but once in five years I would
willingly wait for it and maintain him in leisure, if need be, in the
intervals; but that would be a sorry account to present to them. Five
years of this sort of thing, moreover, would effectually settle the
question. I wish he were less of a genius and more of a charlatan! He 's
too confoundedly all of one piece; he won't throw overboard a grain
of the cargo to save the rest. Fancy him thus with all his brilliant
personal charm, his handsome head, his careless step, his look as of a
nervous nineteenth-century Apollo, and you will understand that there
is mighty little comfort in seeing him in a bad way. He was tolerably
foolish last summer at Baden Baden, but he got on his feet, and for a
while he was steady. Then he began to waver again, and at last toppled
over. Now, literally, he 's lying prone. He came into my room last
night, miserably tipsy. I assure you, it did n't amuse me..... About
Miss Light it 's a long story. She is one of the great beauties of all
time, and worth coming barefoot to Rome, like the pilgrims of old, to
see. Her complexion, her glance, her step, her dusky tresses, may have
been seen before in a goddess, but never in a woman. And you may take
this for truth, because I 'm not in love with her. On the contrary! Her
education has been simply infernal. She is corrupt, perverse, as proud
as the queen of Sheba, and an appalling coquette; but she is generous,
and with patience and skill you may enlist her imagination in a good
cause as well as in a bad one. The other day I tried to manipulate it a
little. Chance offered me an interview to which it was possible to give
a serious turn, and I boldly brok