The Blue Duchess

for a very small part, as a simple spectator, my heart was too much mixed up in it for me to-day not to feel in similar circumstances the bitter sensation of the irony of th

Psyche," for instance, which has been standing on the easel for years, or one of those inanimate

ness too: the feeling that one is but an inferior double of another, a small and poor proof of a block already printed, a sample of humanity in the likeness of a model who has already lived, and in whose destiny it is possible to read beforehand one's own destiny! But not all one's own destiny! For I am only too well aware that I suffer from the same failings as Fromentin w

, should I have brought back from Spain, Morocco, Italy and Egypt as many pages of notes as sketches? I have for fifteen years, wandered between numberless contradictory forms of art and mind. I have wandered from country to country seeking the sun and health; from museum to museum seeking ?sthetic revelations, and later from art

Moreau, of Puvis de Chavannes, and of Burne-Jones, why should M. Vincent la Croix deprive himself of this compensation: wasting his time after his own fashion, like the rich amateur, the dilettante and the critic he is? That is the reason why, when about to live over again in thought the episodes of a real little romance, into which chance introduced me, I have prepared paper, a pen, and ink. Here is a fresh proof that I shall always lack spontaneous and gushing geniality; I have gone out of my way to