s infinitely
precious. There was of course the seal to break and each item of the
packet to count over and handle and estimate; but somehow, in the light
of the hint, all the elements of a situation of the sort most to my
taste were there. I could even remember no occasion on which, so
confronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take stock, in
this fashion, of suggested wealth. For I think, verily, that there are
degrees of merit in subjects--in spite of the fact that to treat even
one of the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for
the feverish and prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its
dignity as POSSIBLY absolute. What it comes to, doubtless, is that
even among the supremely good--since with such alone is it one's theory
of one's honour to be concerned--there is an ideal BEAUTY of goodness
the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic faith to its
maximum. Then truly, I hold, one's theme may be said to shine, and
that of "The Ambassadors," I confess, wore this glow for me from
beginning to end. Fortunately thus I am able to estimate this as,
frankly, quite the best, "all round," of all my productions; any
failure of that justification would have made such an extreme of
complacency publicly fatuous.

I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective intermittence,
never one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow beneath one's feet,
a felt ingratitude in the scheme adopted, under which confidence fails
and opportunity seems but to mock. If the motive of "The Wings of the
Dove," as I have noted, was to worry me at moments by a sealing-up of
its face--though without prejudice to its again, of a sudden, fairly
grimacing with expression--so in this other business I had absolute
conviction and constant clearness to deal with; it had been a frank
proposition, the whole bunch of data, installed on my premises like a
monotony of fine weather. (The order of composition, in these things,
I may mention, was reversed by the order of publication; the earlier
written of the two books having appeared as the later.) Even under the
weight of my hero's years I could feel my postulate firm; even under
the strain of the difference between those of Madame de Vionnet and
those of Chad Newsome, a difference liable to be denounced as shocking,
I could still feel it serene. Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I
seem to make out, in this full and sound sense of the matter; it shed
f