by word nor look any
opinion of what he had just heard.

"I find that you have made great progress in your old art of expressing
yourself by silence," said the young man at length, with a somewhat
forced lightness of tone. "Do you remember how I used to be able to
tell from the degree, and, so to speak, from the pitch of your silence,
just what you were thinking of my nonsense? I can tell in the same way
now: you think my decision to become an artist is a mere absurdity. You
used to tell me that I was not fit either for science or art--that I
was an _homme d'action_. But there's no help for it now: if it is a
wrong road--why, I am in it once for all and mean to follow it to the
end. So speak out, and tell me candidly whether I must look up another
master, or whether the lion will endure the company of the puppy in his
cage--as he used to before he himself was a full-grown king of the
desert?"

"What shall I say to you, my dear boy?" replied the sculptor, in his
quiet, rather slow manner. "The thing is a matter of course. I need not
say to you, well as you know me, that I can hardly base any very
exalted hopes upon an art-apprentice who takes up his task somewhat as
a man might marry a woman with whom he had not been especially in love,
but who now, when his real sweetheart has given him the mitten, is a
good enough last resort; that the future career of an art adopted thus
out of spite, as it were, seems to me very doubtful. But then, too, I
know you well enough to be sure that all the Phidiases and Michael
Angelos in the world couldn't make you break your resolution, and that,
if I should lock my door against you, you would be just the fellow to
bind yourself out as an apprentice to the first of my colleagues you
might chance upon. And then--to be honest--it is such a pleasure to me
to have you back again at all, that out of pure selfishness I can't
make any objection if your energy, instead of taking hold of real life,
chooses to spend itself on a harmless bit of clay. For the rest--let us
speak of it another time--or not at all, whichever pleases you better.
In such matters we take no counsel, after all, but that of our own
souls; and if this isn't always the best for us--why, we are sovereigns
of ourselves, and have it in our own power to save or ruin ourselves
according to our natures. Here is my hand, then. You can begin
to-morrow, if you like, your apprenticeship as a kneader of clay and
chipper of stone--and