ertile, you 've the sterile. It's the difference between Yea
and Nay, between Willy and Nilly. Serenely, serenely, you will drift
to your grave, and never once know what it is to be consumed, harried,
driven by a deep, inextinguishable, unassuageable craving to write a
song. You 'll never know the heartburn, the unrest, the
conscience-sickness, the self-abasement that I know when I 'm not
writing one, nor the glorious anguish of exhilaration when I am. I can
get no conception of your state of mind--any more than a nightingale
could conceive the state of mind of a sparrow. In a sparrowish way, it
must be rather blissful--no? We artists are the salt of the earth, of
course; but every art knows its own bitterness, and--_il faut souffrir
pour etre sel_."

"It's the difference between egotism rampant and modesty regardant,"
Anthony, with some grimness, returned. "I am content to sit in my
place, and watch the pantomime. You long to get upon the stage. Your
unassuageable craving to write a song is, in its essence, just an
unassuageable craving to make yourself an object of attention. And
that's the whole truth about you artists. I recollect your telling me
that Friday was unlucky."

"Oh, how superficial you are," Adrian plaintively protested. "A man
like me, you should understand, is meant for the world--for the world's
delight, for mankind's wonder. And here unfortunate circumstances--my
poverty and not my will--constrain me to stint the world of its due: to
languish in this lost corner of Nowhere, like Wamba the son of Witless,
the mere professed buffoon of a merer franklin. Well, my unassuageable
craving to write a song is, in its essence, just a great, splendid,
generous desire to indemnify the world. The world needs me--the world
has me not--but the world _shall_ have me. For the world's behoof, I
will translate myself into semi-breves and crotchets. So _there_!
Besides, to be entirely frank, I can't help it. Nothing human is
perfect that does not exhibit somewhere a fine inconsequence. Thus I
exhibit mine. I make music from a high sense of duty, to enrich the
world; but at the same time I make it because I can't help making it.
I make it as the bee makes honey, as the Jew makes money,
spontaneously, inevitably. It is my nature to,--just as it 's the
nature of fire to burn, and of dairy-maids to churn. It is the
inherent, ineradicable impulse of my bounteous soul."

"You told me in so many words