real gift and incredible agility, he was without the capacity for martyrdom. From the bitter musical truth of a Racicot, Max and his ilk scooped off and served up the sweet froth, catching the public fancy with it and enjoying an immediate vogue. But the public, after the first exhilaration, would tire of the froth and turn to Racicot for the real beverage. By that time Max would be rich and—Racicot would be under the sod, his resting place marked by a heap of bead and wire wreaths.
And his gouty old friend Casimir, tenacious of life, fondly recalling réunions agréeables with his musical confrere, would say, with a pregnant shake of his massive head, not what a Harvard man's notion of a genius would be expected to utter, but just what a sorrowful janitor might say, "Ce que c'est que de nous!"
Amen, reflected Grover—and Selah.
To see the force of Casimir's counsel was one thing: to apply it another. As Grover turned from subject to subject, from still-lifes to portraits of Mme. Choiseul and Mouche,—which Madame confidently expected to see one day on the walls of the Luxembourg and for
