"You are mistaken if you estimate lightly this intentional undermining of a well-earned renown. It cannot be accurately shown out of what atoms an artist's fame gradually rises, nor how they are wafted into a whole, just as easily can it be blown into pieces! How quickly the colours glow in a gay, shimmering structure of clouds; fame, too, is but effulgence, and suddenly dead night comes to relieve its light. Singers, both men and women, are condemned before all others to outlive their fame." "Nor do they receive it freshly in their hands at first." "Oh, no, it withers for them--in their hands! Read the article which Spiegeler has to-day had printed upon my 'Somnambula,' such an article is a blight upon every blossom of renown. They are all tiny half-concealed pieces of malice, but they hit one's heart. Public opinion is easily led, to-morrow already I shall stand before hundreds who no longer believe in me. Ah fame! How paralysing is the sensation of being given up to the crowd's want of faith." "All great artists have been exposed to such attacks." "But not all have overcome them successfully! How many talents and geniuses have been destroyed by the indifference of the public, whose enthusiasm was nipped in the bud often by means of personal animosity on the part of the critic; often by their distorted comprehension! Only those are numbered in the history of art who bore away the prize, not the others who with equal courage and equal strength, undertook the race of life, but succumbed beneath the obstacles which often chance, but still more often wicked will, cast into their path. But for him who so labours without pleasure in a career of art, it is greater torture than all else that men do against their will, for what is art without enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is only augmented pleasure, which lays hold of men so that they may pour out upon others some of their own overflowing abundance." "Is enthusiasm then dependent upon the approval of the many? Is it not the artist's voluntary devotion to his ideal?" "It is dependent upon his happy mood, because to produce the beautiful is bliss and a favour of destiny. Read this condemnation, must not every glad emotion be crushed by it? I have irritated the critic, this is his revenge!" Blanden was obliged to confess that this criticism of Spiegeler was a collection of flowers of the most pointed epigrams, that it was spiteful, and in its way annihilating. "Even two years ago," continued Giulia, "I should more easily have risen above this scorn; at that time I was sure of my voice and my success, now it is different--" "Two years ago! And was not then Signora Giulia secretly at my castle during my absence?" "I do not deny it! Curiosity prompted me to become acquainted with my friend's home." "And did you not enchant all the rooms of my castle with leaves of recollection and golden sayings?"