"But not all have overcome them successfully! How many talents and geniuses have been destroyed by the indifference of the public, whose enthusiasm was nipped in the bud often by means of personal animosity on the part of the critic; often by their distorted comprehension! Only those are numbered in the history of art who bore away the prize, not the others who with equal courage and equal strength, undertook the race of life, but succumbed beneath the obstacles which often chance, but still more often wicked will, cast into their path. But for him who so labours without pleasure in a career of art, it is greater torture than all else that men do against their will, for what is art without enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is only augmented pleasure, which lays hold of men so that they may pour out upon others some of their own overflowing abundance."
"Is enthusiasm then dependent upon the approval of the many? Is it not the artist's voluntary devotion to his ideal?"
"It is dependent upon his happy mood, because to produce the beautiful is bliss and a favour of destiny. Read this condemnation, must not every glad emotion be crushed by it? I have irritated the critic, this is his revenge!"
Blanden was obliged to confess that this criticism of Spiegeler was a collection of flowers of the most pointed epigrams, that it was spiteful, and in its way annihilating.
"Even two years ago," continued Giulia, "I should more easily have risen above this scorn; at that time I was sure of my voice and my success, now it is different--"
"Two years ago! And was not then Signora Giulia secretly at my castle during my absence?"
"I do not deny it! Curiosity prompted me to become acquainted with my friend's home."
"And did you not enchant all the rooms of my castle with leaves of recollection and golden sayings?"
"It was a pardonable wish to awaken the recollections of a mysterious meeting by the traces which an equally mysterious visitor left behind."
"Not the charm of mystery brought us together at that time, it pressed its seal upon our happy meeting."