e lanes--when a boy throws his line in a
fishing-stream--when a grisette sits and works at her attic
lattice--when a student dreams under the linden leaves--he is on their
lips, in their hearts, in their fancies and joys. What a power! What a
dominion! Wider than any that emperors boast!"

"And," added Estmere, with a smile, "if you were not Tricotrin you would
be Beranger?"

* * *

"Aye! Hymns forbad at noonday are ever so sung at night; and oftentimes,
what at noon would have been a lark's chant of liberty, grows at night
to a vampire's screech for blood!" he murmured. "They are gay at your
chateau up yonder."

* * *

Be not a coward who leaves the near duty that is as cruel to grasp as a
nettle, and flies to gather the far-off duty that will flaunt in men's
sight like a sun-flower.

* * *

"A great Character!" says Society, when it means--"a great Scamp!"

* * *

Estmere laid the panel down as he heard.

"Whoever painted it must have genius."

"Genius!" interrupted Tricotrin. "Pooh! What is genius? Only the power
to see a little deeper and a little clearer than most other people. That
is all."

"The power of vision? Of course. But that renders it none the less
rare."

"Oh yes, it is rare--rare like kingfishers, and sandpipers, and herons,
and black eagles. And so men always shoot it down, as they do the birds,
and stick up the dead body in glass cases, and label it, and stare at
it, and bemoan it as 'so singular,' having done their best to insure its
extinction!"

Estmere looked keenly at him.

"Surely genius that secretes itself as your friend's must do," he said,
touching the panel afresh, "commits suicide, and desires its own
extinction."

"Pshaw!" said Tricotrin, impatiently, and with none of his habitual
courtesy. "You think the kingfisher and the black eagle have no better
thing to live for than to become the decorations of a great personage's
glass cabinets. You think genius can find no higher end than to furnish
frescoes and panellings for a nobleman's halls and ante-chambers. You
mistake very much; the mistake is a general one in your order. But
believe me, the kingfisher enjoys his brown moorland stream, and his
tufts of green rushes, and his water-swept bough of hawthorn; the eagle
enjoys his wild rocks, and his sweep through the air, and his steady
gaze at the sun that blinds all human eyes;--and neither eve