"Well, my good fellow, if it is not dull or stupid or melodramatic, what is it!" he exclaimed merrily--"It must be something!" "Yes,--it is this,--it is beyond me altogether." And I spoke with some bitterness. "Quite beyond me. I could not write it now,--I wonder I could write it then. Lucio, I daresay I am talking foolishly,--but it seems to me I must have been on some higher altitude of thought when I wrote the book,--a height from which I have since fallen." "I'm sorry to hear this," he answered, with twinkling eyes--"From what you say it appears to me you have been guilty of literary sublimity. Oh bad, very bad! Nothing can be worse. To write sublimely is a grievous sin, and one which critics never forgive. I'm really grieved for you, my friend--I never thought your case was quite so desperate." I laughed in spite of my depression. "You are incorrigible, Lucio!" I said--"But your cheerfulness is very inspiriting. All I wanted to explain to you is this,--that my book expresses a certain tone of thought which purporting to be _mine_, is not _me_,--in short, I, in my present self have no sympathy with it. I must have changed very much since I wrote it." "Changed? Why yes, I should think so!" and Lucio laughed heartily--"The possession of five millions is bound to change a man considerably for the better--or worse! But you seem to be worrying yourself most absurdly about nothing. Not one author in many centuries writes from his own heart or as he truly feels--when he does, he becomes well-nigh immortal. This planet is too limited to hold more than one Homer, one Plato, one Shakespeare. Don't distress yourself--you are neither of these three! You belong to the age, Tempest,--it is a decadent ephemeral age, and most things connected with it are decadent and ephemeral. Any era that is dominated by the love of money only, has a rotten core within it and must perish. All history tells us so, but no one accepts the lesson of history. Observe the signs of the time,--Art is made subservient to the love of money--literature, politics and religion the same,--_you_ cannot escape from the general disease. The only thing to do is to make the best of it,--no one can reform it--least of all you, who have so much of the lucre given to your share." He paused,--I was silent, watching the bright fire-glow and the dropping red cinders.