to speak, he has worked outward from the very core of that the exterior of which his eyes have already taken in and fully comprehended. However," he went on after a short pause, during which he unwound the wet cloths from his Bacchante, "you are at liberty to believe that all this is merely my personal opinion and nothing more than exaggerated estimate of what constitutes true art. In ordinary life the artist is distinguished from the dilettante only by the fact that the former follows the thing as a calling, and the latter only for his own amusement. According to this, you would be an artist from the moment you cast aside the baron, the statesman or jurist, the _homme d'action_, that you have in you, and regularly devoted a certain number of hours of the day to dirtying your fingers with clay. If you stick to it persistently, it would be very hard lines indeed if, in the course of several years, you should not possess the necessary mechanical skill just as well as any one else. Even to become an academic professor need not be an unattainable aim of your ambition. And if, in spite of all that, I should still continue, in my heart, to look upon you as a born dilettante, you could smile down upon me graciously, and heap coals of fire upon my head by proposing me as an honorary member of your academy. Ah! my dear boy, I tell you, if you should make a close examination of many of our most famous great men, you would bring to light little else than a disguised and beautiful dilettantism, made up of humbug, elegant trappings, and perhaps a few so-called ideas. I know painters who dash off a hand or a foot, a horse's head or an oak-tree, with as unerring an audacity as--well, as a thorough stenographer will bring a two hours' speech into the compass of an octavo page. But Lord have mercy upon them, for they have long since ceased to know what they do; and as the dear public has an even coarser sense, a still blunter natural feeling, and even more respect for appearances--why, it's all just as it should be, and no one can complain that he has been cheated." For some time after this speech silence reigned in the studio. There were heard only the fluttering of the sparrows, the heavy breathing of Homo, for the old fellow was already enjoying his morning nap again, and, in the saint-factory near by, the clatter and scraping and picking of seven or eight chisels in the hands of the assistants who were hard at work.