too successful ever to feel the lack of them.

As he grew to old age he looked at things always from a fixed point
of view, and cultivated fixed rules--but only so long as that point or
those rules coincided with expediency, The mode of life which offered
some passing degree of interest--that, in his opinion, was the right
one and the only one that men ought to affect. He had great fluency of
argument; and this, I think, increased the adaptability of his morals
and enabled him to speak of one and the same act, now as good, and now,
with abuse, as abominable.




XI -- IN THE DRAWING-ROOM AND THE STUDY

Twilight had set in when we reached home. Mamma sat down to the piano,
and we to a table, there to paint and draw in colours and pencil. Though
I had only one cake of colour, and it was blue, I determined to draw a
picture of the hunt. In exceedingly vivid fashion I painted a blue boy
on a blue horse, and--but here I stopped, for I was uncertain whether
it was possible also to paint a blue HARE. I ran to the study to consult
Papa, and as he was busy reading he never lifted his eyes from his book
when I asked, "Can there be blue hares?" but at once replied, "There
can, my boy, there can." Returning to the table I painted in my blue
hare, but subsequently thought it better to change it into a blue bush.
Yet the blue bush did not wholly please me, so I changed it into a tree,
and then into a rick, until, the whole paper having now become one blur
of blue, I tore it angrily in pieces, and went off to meditate in the
large arm-chair.