Meanwhile, slowly and almost imperceptibly, my 'boomed' book dropped out of notice. Morgeson presented a heavy bill of publishing costs which I paid without a murmur; now and then an allusion to my 'literary triumphs' cropped up in one or other of the newspapers, but otherwise no one spoke of my 'famous' work, and few read it. I enjoyed the same sort of cliquey reputation and public failure attending a certain novel entitled 'Marius the Epicurean.' The journalists with whom I had come in contact began to drift away like flotsam and jetsam; I think they saw I was not likely to give many more 'reviewing' dinners or suppers, and that my marriage with the Earl of Elton's daughter would lift me into an atmosphere where Grub-street could not breathe comfortably or stretch its legs at ease. The heap of gold on which I sat as on a throne, divided me gradually from even the back courts and lower passages leading to the Temple of Fame,--and almost unconsciously to myself I retreated step by step, shading my eyes as it were from the sun, and seeing the glittering turrets in the distance, with a woman's slight figure entering the lofty portico, turning back her laurelled head to smile sorrowfully and with divinest pity upon me, ere passing in to salute the gods. Yet, if asked about it, everyone on the press would have said that I had had a great success. I--only I--realized the bitterness and truth of my failure. I had not touched the heart of the public;--I had not succeeded in so waking my readers out of the torpor of their dull and commonplace every-day lives, that they should turn towards me with outstretched hands, exclaiming--"More,--more of these thoughts which comfort and inspire us!--which make us hear God's voice proclaiming 'All's well!' above the storms of life!" I had not done it,--I could not do it. And the worst part of my feeling on this point was the idea that possibly I might have done it had I remained poor! The strongest and healthiest pulse in the composition of a man,--the necessity for hard work,--had been killed in me. I knew I need not work; that the society in which I now moved thought it ridiculous if I did work; that I was expected to spend money and 'enjoy' myself in the idiotic fashion of what the 'upper ten' term enjoyment. My acquaintances were not slow in suggesting plans for the dissipation of my surplus cash,--why did I not build for myself a marble palace on the Riviera?--or a yacht to completely outshine the Prince of Wales's 'Britannia'? Why did I not start a theatre? Or found a newspaper? Not one of my social advisers once proposed my doing any private personal good with my fortune. When some terrible case of distress was published, and subscriptions were raised to relieve the object or objects of suffering, I invariably gave Ten Guineas, and allowed myself to be thanked for my 'generous assistance.' I might as well have given ten pence, for the guineas were no more to me in comparison than the pence.