pleasant that your window should open, not to the sky, but to an unclean
prospect of glass roofing; nor was it agreeable to get up at seven in the
morning; and ten hours of work daily are trying to the resolution even of
the best intentioned. But we had sworn to forego all pleasures for the sake
of art--table d'hôtes in the Rue Maubeuge, French and foreign duchesses in
the Champs Elysées, thieves in the Rue de la Gaieté.

I was entering therefore on a duel with Marshall for supremacy in an art
for which, as has already been said, I possessed no qualifications. It will
readily be understood how a mind like mine, so keenly alive to all
impulses, and so unsupported by any moral convictions, would suffer in so
keen a contest waged under such unequal and cruel conditions. It was in
truth a year of great passion and great despair. Defeat is bitter when it
comes swiftly and conclusively, but when defeat falls by inches like the
fatal pendulum in the pit, the agony is a little out of reach of words to
define. It was even so. I remember the first day of my martyrdom. The
clocks were striking eight; we chose our places, got into position. After
the first hour, I compared my drawing with Marshall's. He had, it is true,
caught the movement of the figure better than I, but the character and the
quality of his work was miserable. That of mine was not. I have said I
possessed no artistic facility, but I did not say faculty, my drawing was
never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I possessed all
the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without which all is
valueless;--I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off a clever
caricature of his schoolmaster or make a _life-like_ sketch of his
favourite horse on the barn door with a piece of chalk.

The following week Marshall made a great deal of progress; I thought the
model did not suit me, and hoped for better luck next time. That time never
came, and at the end of the first month I was left toiling hopelessly in