nd the artist took
pride in letting her worship him. He, who at first was the one who
implored and pursued, assumed now an air of passive superiority,
accepting Concha's homage.

Lacking enthusiasm for work, in order to keep up his reputation
Renovales took refuge in the official honors which are granted to
respected masters. He put off till the next day the new work, the great
work that was to call forth new cries of admiration over his name. He
would paint his famous picture of Phryne on a beach, when summer came,
and he could retire to the solitary shore, taking with him the perfect
beauty to serve as his model. Perhaps he could persuade the countess.
Who knows! She smiled with satisfaction every time she heard from his
lips the praise of her beauty. But meanwhile the master demanded that
people should remember his name for his earlier works, that they should
admire him for what he had already produced.

He was irritated at the papers, which extolled the younger generation,
remembered him only to mention him in passing, like a consecrated glory,
like a man who was dead and had his pictures in the Museo del Prado. He
was gnawed with dumb anger, like an actor who is tortured with envy,
seeing the stage occupied by others.

He wanted to work; he was going to work immediately. But as time passed,
he felt an increasing laziness, which incapacitated him for work, a
numbness in his hands, which he concealed even from his most intimate
friends, ashamed when he recalled his lightness of touch in the old
days.

"This will not last," he said to himself with the confidence of a man
who does not doubt his ability.

In one of his fanciful moods, he compared himself with a dog, restless,
fierce and aggressive when he is tormented with hunger, but gentle and
peaceable when he is surrounded with comforts. He needed his periods of
greed and restlessness, when he desired everything, when he could not
find peace for his work, and in the midst of his marital troubles
attacked the canvas as if it were an enemy, hurling colors on it
furiously, in slaps of light. Even after he was rich and famous, he had
had something to long for. "If I only were free! If I were master of my
time! If I lived alone, without a family, without cares; as a true
artist should live!" And now his wishes were fulfilled, he had nothing
to hope for, but he was a victim of laziness that amounted to
exhaustion, absolutely without desire, as if only wrath and rest