ttery, even to Barty, who
was so fond of it from her, and in spite of her unbounded admiration
for him.

Such was your mother, my dear Roberta, in the bloom of her early
twenties and ever after; till her death, in fact--on the day
following his!

* * * * *

Somewhere about the spring of 1863 she said to me:

"Bob, Barty has written a book. Either I'm an idiot, or blinded by
conjugal conceit, or else Barty's book--which I've copied out myself
in my very best handwriting--is one of the most beautiful and
important books ever written. Come and dine with me to-night;
Barty's dining in the City with the Fishmongers--you shall have what
you like best: pickled pork and pease-pudding, a dressed crab and a
Welsh rabbit to follow, and draught stout--and after dinner I will
read you the beginning of _Sardonyx_--that's what he's called
it--and I should like to have your opinion."

I dined with her as she wished. We were alone, and she told me how
he wrote every night in bed, in a kind of ecstasy--between two and
four, in Blaze--and then elaborated his work during the day, and
made sketches for it.

And after dinner she read me the first part of _Sardonyx_; it took
three hours.

Then Barty came home, having dined well, and in very high spirits.

"Well, old fellow! how do you like _Sardonyx_?"

I was so moved and excited I could say nothing--I couldn't even
smoke. I was allowed to take the precious manuscript away with me,
and finished it during the night.

Next morning I wrote to him out of the fulness of my heart.

I read it aloud to my father and mother, and then lent it to
Scatcherd, who read it to Ida. In twenty-four hours our gay and
genial Barty--our Robin Goodfellow and Merry Andrew, our funny
man--had become for us a demi-god; for all but my father, who looked
upon him as a splendid but irretrievably lost soul, and mourned over
him as over a son of his own.

And in two months _Sardonyx_ was before the reading world, and the
middle-aged reader will remember the wild enthusiasm and the storm
it raised.

All that is ancient history, and I will do no more than allude to
the unparalleled bitterness of the attacks made by the Church on a
book which is now quoted again and again from every pulpit in
England--in the world--and has been translated into almost every
language under the sun.

Thus he leaped into fame and fortune at a bound, and at first they
delighted him. He would tak