ffort and content with the sublime peace of conscious
power. He had believed in himself: it is much. But it is not all. As
years had slid away and the world of men would not believe in him, this
noble faith in himself grew a weary and bitter thing. One shadow climbed
the hills of the long years with him and was always by his side: this
constant companion was Failure.

Fame is very capricious, but Failure is seldom inconstant. Where it once
clings, there it tarries.

* * *

It was a brilliant and gay day in Munich. It was the beginning of a
Bavarian summer, with the great plain like a sea of grass with flowers
for its foam, and the distant Alps of Tyrol and Vorarlberg clearly seen
in warm, transparent, buoyant weather.

Down by the winding ways of the river there were birch and beechen
thickets in glory of leaf; big water-lilies spread their white beauty
against the old black timbers of the water-mills; and in the quaint,
ancient places of the old streets, under the gables and beams, pots of
basil, and strings of green pease, and baskets of sweet-smelling
gillyflowers and other fragrant old-fashioned things, blossomed wherever
there was a breadth of blue sky over them or a maiden's hand within;
whilst above the towers and steeples, above the clanging bells of the
Domkirche and the melon-shaped crest of the Frauenkirche, and all the
cupolas and spires and minarets in which the city abounds, the pigeons
went whirling and wheeling from five at sunrise to seven of sunset,
flocks of grey and blue and black and white, happy as only birds can be,
and as only birds can be when they are doves of Venice or of Munich,
with all the city's hearths and homes for their granaries, and with the
sun and the clouds for their royal estate.

In the wide, dull new town it was dusty and hot; the big squares were
empty and garish-looking; the blistering frescoes on the buildings were
gaudy and out of place; the porticoes and friezes were naked and
staring, and wanted all that belongs to them in Italy. All the deep,
intense shadows, the sultry air, the sense of immeasurable space and of
unending light, the half-naked figures graceful as a plume of maize, the
vast projecting roofs, the spouts of tossing water, the brown barefoot
straw-plaiter passing in a broad path of sunshine, the old bronze lamp
above the painted shrine, the gateway framing the ethereal landscape of
amethystine horizons and silvery olive ways--they want