at night that the terrors of
my condition manifested themselves. Then sleep forsook my eyes; a dull
throbbing weight of pain encircled my head like a crown of thorns;
nervous terrors shook me from head to foot; fragments of my own musical
compositions hummed in my ears with wearying persistence--fragments
that always left me in a state of distressed conjecture; for I never
could remember how they ended, and I puzzled myself vainly over
crotchets and quavers that never would consent to arrange themselves in
any sort of finale. So the days went on; for Colonel Everard and his
wife, those days were full of merriment, sight-seeing, and enjoyment.
For me, though outwardly I appeared to share in the universal gaiety,
they were laden with increasing despair and wretchedness; for I began
to lose hope of ever recovering my once buoyant health and strength,
and, what was even worse, I seemed to have utterly parted with all
working ability. I was young, and up to within a few months life had
stretched brightly before me, with the prospect of a brilliant career.
And now what was I? A wretched invalid--a burden to myself and to
others--a broken spar flung with other fragments of ship wrecked lives
on the great ocean of Time, there to be whirled away and forgotten. But
a rescue was approaching; a rescue sudden and marvellous, of which, in
my wildest fancies, I had never dreamed.

Staying in the same hotel with us was a young Italian artist, Raffaello
Cellini by name. His pictures were beginning to attract a great deal of
notice, both in Paris and Rome: not only for their faultless drawing,
but for their wonderfully exquisite colouring. So deep and warm and
rich were the hues he transferred to his canvases, that others of his
art, less fortunate in the management of the palette, declared he must
have invented some foreign compound whereby he was enabled to deepen
and brighten his colours for the time being; but that the effect was
only temporary, and that his pictures, exposed to the air for some
eight or ten years, would fade away rapidly, leaving only the traces of
an indistinct blur. Others, more generous, congratulated him on having
discovered the secrets of the old masters. In short, he was admired,
condemned, envied, and flattered, all in a breath; while he himself,
being of a singularly serene and unruffled disposition, worked away
incessantly, caring little or nothing for the world's praise or blame.

Cellini had a pretty su