CHAPTER XLI.
A week or two later he saw Othmar again enter his little parlour. Othmar made ministers wait on him, and would keep princes in his ante-chamber with an indifference which gained him the repute of arrogance; but he waited himself on Rosselin, a man old, poor, and solitary. These were his eccentricities, which the world hated as it would never have hated any vices in which he might have chosen to indulge.
'I have come to speak to you of your wishes, which I perhaps dismissed too hastily,' he said, as he seated himself. 'You really believe that to be first seen and heard, as you proposed, would benefit your pupil?'
'I do not doubt it,' replied Rosselin, 'for the reasons I named to you, and also because to succeed before a choice and cultured audience is the greatest of stimulants, the most certain of practical tests. I do not think that a long novitiate would suit Damaris Bérarde. She is of the south; her beauty is nearly at its height now; she is fully matured in every way; she is of an impetuous and sensitive temperament; she is not easily governed; she would never brook the tedium and slavery of the theatres of the provinces; she must take the world by storm, mount its throne at a bound, or not at all. She would easily be irrevocably disgusted and eternally lost to art.'
'Would that be so much a matter for regret!'
'What fate can she have otherwise? You cannot make her a duchesse, she would not consent to become a bourgeoise. She is a déclassé: you have said it yourself. There are two asylums possible for a déclassé: they are Pleasure and Art. I prefer the latter.'
'Art is quite cruel enough. She will never be able to go back into privacy. What a loss!—what an irreparable loss! And you speak of it as a gain!'
'I speak as I spoke long ago, when first you named her to me. The publicity you lament is the price which is paid for fame. Some do not think the price too high, some do. It is you yourself who wished me to prepare her for an artist's career. She cannot become a great artist if she remain in obscurity.'