"However, I do not trust to chance, and my pride refuses to stoop to intrigue. What shall I do, then? Shall I wait until some collector's eye is attracted by a decorative figure, broadly conceived, on sized canvas, and he is so impressed by it that he comes next day to the wineshop to hunt me up and order a picture? Such good fortune may occur once in a hundred times; but even then, on the day when it occurs to me, I shall owe my bread to the patronage of the rich man, who is beginning to be interested in me. Sooner or later I must bow before him and beg him to recommend me to others. Would it not be better for me, at the earliest possible moment, as soon as I am sure of myself, to quit the ladder and the apron, to assume the external aspect of a man who does not beg, and to present myself, with my head erect, among the rich? If I go out of the wineshop arm-in-arm with the merry knights of the saw and trowel, it is evident that I cannot enter the palace as a guest, but as a paid workman; and at this moment, if I should venture to accost one of these lovely women and ask her to dance, I should be spat upon and turned out of doors within a quarter of an hour. The time must come, however, when they will make overtures to me, and when my talent will be a title capable of contending on equal terms with that of duke or marquis for the triumphs of this world. But only on condition that my habits and my manners bear the stamp and seal of aristocracy. I must be what they call a man of good breeding; otherwise it would avail me nothing to be a man of genius; no one would believe it. "I shall not make my way as an artist, therefore, except by destroying the artisan in me. I must succeed in becoming the free possessor of my own works, and in selling them as an owner does, instead of executing them like a day-laborer. Well! for that I must have reputation, and in these days reputation does not go about looking for an artist in his garret; he is obliged to acquire it himself by his own exertions, consorting with those who award it, demanding it as a right and not imploring it as alms. Tell me, Magnani, how I am to escape this dilemma! And yet it pains me terribly, I assure you, to think that I must in some sense deny the race of my fathers, and that I must submit to be accused of idiocy and impudence by men whose brother and friend I feel that I am. You see that I must go away from a country where my father's popularity would make this separation more offensive to others and more painful to myself than elsewhere. I came here to perform a duty--to expiate my heedlessness at Rome; but when my task is done, I must return thither, and from there travel the world over, in the disguise, perhaps premature, of a free man. If I do not do it, farewell to my whole future; I may as well renounce it to-day."