became apparent to his neighbour, a small, wizened, old man, who was
leaning forward, his hands hanging between his knees and his eyes
fixed on the floor, alternately shaking and nodding his head.
In the interval between the parts, they exchanged a few words,
halting, excited on Maurice's part, interrogative on his companion's;
when the performance was over, they walked a part of the way together,
and found so much to say, that often, after this, when his week's work
was behind him, Maurice would cover the intervening miles for the
pleasure of a few hours' conversation with this new friend. In a
small, dark room, the air of which was saturated with tobacco-smoke,
he learned, by degrees, the story of the old musician's life: how,
some thirty years previously, he had drifted into the midst of this
provincial population, where he found it easy to earn enough for his
needs, and where his position was below that of a dancing-master; but
how, long ago, in his youth--that youth of which he spoke with a
far-away tone in his voice, and at which he seemed to be looking out
as at a fading shore--it had been his intention to perfect himself as a
pianist. Life had been against him; when, the resolve was strongest,
poverty and ill-heath kept him down, and since then, with the years
that passed, he had come to see that his place would only have been
among the multitude of little talents, whose destiny it is to imitate
and vulgarise the strivings of genius, to swell the over-huge mass of
mediocrity. And so, he had chosen that his life should he a failure--a
failure, that is, in the eyes of the world; for himself, he judged
otherwise. The truth that could be extracted from words was such a
fluctuating, relative truth. Failure! success!--what WAS success, but a
clinging fast, unabashed by smile or neglect, to that better part in
art, in one's self, that cannot be taken away?--never for a thought's
space being untrue to the ideal each one of us bears in his breast;
never yielding jot or tittle to the world's opinion. That was what it