thought? The lay figure to support the drapery suffices for the
artist, the Venus herself is in his brain. Now, if that little fellow
there would neither cut capers nor speak, I ask no more of him. Let him
sit firmly as he does now, staring me boldly in the face that way.

"Yes," said I, "lay your hand on the arm of your chair, so, and let the
other be clenched thus." And so I placed him. "Never utter a word, but
nod to me at rare intervals."

He has since acknowledged that he believed me to be deranged; but as I
seemed a harmless case, and he could rely on his activity for escape, he
made no objection to my directions, the less, too, that he enjoyed his
wine immensely, and was at liberty to drink as he pleased.

"Now," thought I, "one glance, only one, to see that he poses properly."

All right; nothing could be better. His face was turned slightly to
one side, giving what the painters call action to the head, and he was
perfect I now resigned myself to the working of the spell, and already
I felt its influence over me. Where and with what was I to begin?
Numberless questions thronged to my mind. I wanted to know a thousand
disputed things, and fully as many that were only disputed by myself.
I felt that as such another opportunity would assuredly never present
itself twice in my life, that the really great use of the occasion would
be to make every inquiry subsidiary to my own case,--to make all my
investigations what the Germans would call "Potts-wise." My intensest
anxiety was then to ascertain if, like myself, his Grace started in life
with very grand aspirations.

"Did you feel, for instance, when playing practical jokes on the maids
of honor in Dublin, some sixty-odd years ago, that you were only, in
sportive vein, throwing off so much light ballast to make room for the
weightier material that was to steady you in the storm-tossed sea
before you? Have you experienced the almost necessity of these little
expansions of eccentricity as I have? Was there always in your heart,
as a young man, as there is now in mine, a profound contempt for the
opinions of your contemporaries? Did you continually find yourself
repeating, '_Respice finem!_ Mark where I shall be yet'?" There was
another investigation which touched me still more closely, but it was
long before I could approach it I saw all the difficulty and delicacy
of the inquiry; but, with that same recklessness of consequences which
would make me catch at a quee