... A gentleman has written to me from Zurich to say that in the club to which he belongs my works are read with such admiration that the members are crazy to get a picture of me of any kind, nature, or description, and that the artist who takes it has but to forward it C. O. D.... You see that my fame is spreading like a conflagration, and not in arithmetical ratio either, but in geometric, and even cubic.... _March 28, 1856._ ... R., too, kissed my hand,--a ceremony to which I cannot accustom myself; yet it is one, I suppose, that forms part of my imperial dignity.... _June 6, 1856._ ... Becher sent his son and nephew here, and Baehr sent his son also, and that only that these young people may in their old age be able to boast that they had seen and spoken to me.... _June 11, 1856._ ... Professor Baehr, of Dresden, was here yesterday, and, penetrated with the most praiseworthy enthusiasm, wished to exchange his beautiful silver snuff-box for my forlorn old leather one. I refused, however. He told me of a certain Herr von Wilde, who was a perfect fanatic on the subject of my philosophy, and who, at the age of eighty-five, died with my name on his lips. My Buddha, re-gilded, glittering on his pedestal, gives you his benediction. _August 14, 1856._ ... Four pages and a half of Tallendier about me.[5] You have seen it, I suppose. French chatter, personal details, etc., but where the devil did he hear that I am "tout etonné du bruit que font mes écrits dans le monde?" I am so little astonished, that Emden told Nordwall, to the latter's intense surprise, that I had predicted to him my future celebrity fully twenty years ago.... Now, mediocrity may, of course, be praised, but, as Balzac has put it, it is never discussed. And Schopenhauer, in the matter of discussion, came in for his full share. He was praised and abused by turn. Like every prominent figure, he made a good mark to fire at. Certain critics said that he had stolen from Fichte and Schelling everything in his philosophy that was worth reading, others abused him personally; and one writer, a woman with whom he had refused to converse, and who had probably expected to pay her hotel bill with the protocol of his conversation, wrote a quantity of scurrilous articles about him. But _censura perit, scriptum manet._ The criticisms are forgotten, while his work still endures and, moreover, grows each year into surer and stronger significance. Among his visitors at the time was M. Foucher de Carsil, and the portrait which that gentleman subsequently drew of him is so graphic that it is impossible to resist the temptation of making the following extract:[6]--