THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
of phenomenal success to comprehend or excuse in his fellows—came as a new note.
“To illustrate this theory,” he continued, unconscious of the effect he had produced, “I will tell you about a man whom I once came across in one of the studios of Paris, back of the Pantheon. All his life he had determined to be a sculptor—and when I say ‘determined’ I mean he had thought of nothing else. By day he worked in the atelier, at night he drew from a cast—a custom then of the young sculptors. In the Louvre and in the Luxembourg—out in the gardens of the Tuileries—wherever there was something moulded or cut into form, there at odd hours you could always find this enthusiast. At night too, when the other students were trooping through the Quartier, breaking things or outrunning the gendarmes, this poor devil was working away, doing Ledas and Venuses and groups of nudes, with rearing horses and chariots,—all the trite subjects a young sculptor attempts whose imagination outruns his ability.
“Year after year his things would come up before the jury and be rejected; and they deserved it. Soon it began to dawn on his associates, but never on him, that, try as he might,
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