proving sternness. "I hope it is not from you, at least,
will come any doubts of my courage!"

These words seemed to indicate the spirit in which her resolution had
been taken, and to show that she preferred accepting, as it were, this
challenge, to the humbler alternative of an escape from it.

I wrote as she bade me, and despatched the letter.

CHAPTER XLIV. THE PRICE OF FAME

If the triumphs of genius be amongst the most exalted pleasures of
our nature, its defeats and reverses are also the very saddest of all
afflictions. He who has learned to live, as it were, on the sympathies
of his fellows--to be inspired by them at times, and inspire them at
others--to feel his existence like a compact with the world, wherein
he alternately gives and receives, cannot endure the thought of being
passed over and forgotten. The loss of that favor in which, as in a
sunshine, he basked, is a bereavement too great to be borne. He may
struggle for a while against this depression--he may arm himself with
pride against what his heart denounces as injustice--he may even deceive
him* self into a mock indifference of such judgments; but, do all
he will, he comes at the last to see that his greatest efforts were
prompted by the very enthusiasm they evoked,--that the impression he
produced upon others was like an image in a mirror, by which he could
view the proportions of his mind, and that the flame of his intellect
burned purest and brightest when fanned by the breath of praise.

It will be seen that I limit these observations to dramatic success;
that I am only speaking of the stage and the actor. For him there is
no refuge in the calmer judgment of posterity; there is no appeal to a
dispassionate future. The value stamped upon him now is to be his fame
forever. No other measure of his powers can be taken than the effect he
produced upon his contemporaries; and hence the great precariousness
of a career wherein each passing mood of illness, sorrow, anxiety, or
exhaustion may influence the character of a reputation that might seem
established beyond reversal.

How leniently, then, should we deal with those who labor for our
pleasure in these capacities! How indulgent should we show ourselves
even to their caprices,--justly remembering the arduous nature of a
struggle in which so many requirements are summoned, and that genius
itself is insufficient, if there be not the vigor of health, the high
promptings of ambition, and the