renders her a service by selling her the use of his arms, rather than the beginner in art to be patronized as a weakling or pitied as a madman!" "I approve what you have done," said Michel, who had become pensive in his turn. "I like your pride, and I think that it would be a good example to follow even in my position and with the projects which I entertain, if I were tempted to seek love beyond certain obstacles, which, though absurd, are enormous!" "Oh! it is very different with you, Michel. The obstacles which would exist between you and a great lady to-day will quickly be surmounted, and, as you yourself have said, the day will come when those women will make advances to you. Those words, which escaped from your heart, seemed to me presumptuous and absurd at first. Now that I understand you they seem perfectly natural and legitimate to me. Yes, you will win the favor of women of the most exalted rank, because you are in the bloom of youth, because your beauty is of a refined and somewhat effeminate type, which gives you a resemblance to the men who are born to a life of idleness; because you are accustomed to fashionable society, because you have the instinct of good manners and seem perfectly at home in the clothes you wear; for all these things, added to genius and success, are essential to induce proud women to overlook the artist's plebeian origin. Yes, you will be able to appear a man in their eyes, while I should disguise myself to no purpose; I should never be anything but a mechanic, and my rough shell would show in spite of me. It is too late for me to begin: I am twenty-six years old! But I thrill with strange emotion when I think that, five years ago, when I was still as pliable as wax, if someone had encouraged and ennobled in my eyes the instincts that were springing to life within me, if someone had spoken to me as you have just done, I might have followed a course not unlike yours, and have started upon a soul-stirring career! My mind was open to the sentiment of the beautiful; I could sing like the nightingale, without understanding my own notes, but with the power of untaught inspiration. I could read, understand, and remember many books; I understood nature, too; I could read in the sky and in the broad expanse of the sea, in the verdure of the forests and the blue-capped mountains. It seems to me that I might have been a musician, or a poet, or a landscape painter. And love was already speaking to my heart; already she had appeared to me from whom I cannot detach my thoughts. What a stimulus for me if I had surrendered to my violent temptations!--But I forced them all back into my heart, fearing to be false to my kindred and friends, fearing to degrade myself in their eyes and my own by seeking to rise. I have inured myself to work; my hands have become callous, and my mind as well. My chest has increased in size, it is true, and my heart has kept pace with it, like a polypus which feeds upon me and absorbs all my