"My birthday is the 18th of November, and really, sir, I am curious to know why you feel any disappointment that I am not older."
"Oh! nothing of any great consequence; only this, that by the laws of California, on reaching the age of eighteen you become the sole mistress of yourself."
"I greatly fear," timidly added the girl, "that I shall have to anticipate the law, and assume that responsibility at once."
"But you can only contract through a guardian before that era in your life; and in the agreement between us, that is to be, no third person shall intermeddle. But we will not now speak of that. You must consider yourself my equal here; there must be no secrets to hide from each other; no suspicions engendered. We are both artists. Confidence is the only path to mutual improvement. My business is large, but my ambition to excel greater, far. Listen to me, child!" and suddenly rising, so as to confront Lucile, he darted one of those magnetic glances into the very fortress of her soul, which we have before attempted to describe, and added, in an altered tone of voice, "The sun's raybrush paints the rainbow upon the evanescent cloud, and photographs an iris in the skies. The human eye catches the picture ere it fades, and transfers it with all its beauteous tints to that prepared albumen, the retina. The soul sees it there, and rejoices at the splendid spectacle. Shall insensate nature outpaint the godlike mind? Can she leave her brightest colors on the dark collodion of a thunder-cloud, and I not transfer the blush of a rose, or the vermilion of a dahlia, to my Rivi or Saxe? No! no! I'll not believe it. Let us work together, girl; we'll lead the age we live in. My name shall rival Titian's, and you shall yet see me snatch the colors of the dying dolphin from decay, and bid them live forever."
And so saying, he turned with a suddenness that startled his pupil, and strode hastily out of the apartment.
Unaccustomed, as Lucile had been from her very birth, to brusque manners, like those of the photographer, their grotesqueness impressed her with an indefinable relish for such awkward sincerity, and whetted her appetite to see more of the man whose enthusiasm always got the better of his politeness.
"He is no Frenchman," thought the girl, "but I like him none the less. He has been very, very kind to me, and I am at this moment dependent upon him for my daily bread." Then, changing the direction of her thoughts, they recurred to the subject-matter of Pollexfen's discourse. "Here," thought she, "lies the clue to the labyrinth. If insane, his madness is a noble one; for he would link his name with the progress of his art. He seeks to do away with the necessity of such poor creatures as myself, as adjuncts to photography. Nature, he thinks, should lay on the coloring, not man—the Sun himself should paint, not the human hand." And with these, and kindred thoughts, she opened her escritoire, and taking out her pencils sat down to the performance of her daily labor.
Oh, blessed curse of Adam's posterity, healthful toil, all hail! Offspring of sin and shame—still heaven's best gift to man. Oh, wondrous miracle of Providence! divinest alchemy of celestial science! by which the chastisement of the progenitor transforms itself into a priceless blessing upon the offspring! None but God himself could transmute the sweat of the face into a panacea for the soul. How many myriads have been cured by toil of the heart's sickness and the body's infirmities! The clink of the hammer drowns, in its music, the lamentations of pain and the sighs of sorrow. Even the distinctions of rank and wealth and talents are all forgotten, and the inequalities of stepdame Fortune all forgiven, whilst the busy whirls of industry are bearing us onward to our goal. No condition in life is so much to be envied as his who is too busy to indulge in reverie. Health is his companion, happiness his friend. Ills flee from his presence as night-birds from the streaking of the dawn. Pale Melancholy, and her sister Insanity, never invade his dominions; for Mirth stands sentinel at the border, and Innocence commands the garrison of his soul.
Henceforth let no man war against fate whose lot has been cast in that happy medium, equidistant from the lethargic indolence of superabundant wealth, and the abject paralysis of straitened poverty. Let them toil on, and remember that God is a worker, and strews infinity with revolving worlds! Should he forget, in a moment of grief or triumph, of gladness or desolation, that being born to toil, in labor only shall he find contentment, let him ask of the rivers why they never rest, of the sunbeams why they never pause. Yea, of the great globe itself, why it travels on forever in the golden pathway of the ecliptic, and nature, from her thousand voices, will respond: Motion is life, inertia is death; action is health, stagnation is sickness; toil is glory, torpor is disgrace!
I cannot say that thoughts as profound as these found their way into the mind of Lucile, as she plied her task, but nature vindicated her own laws in her case, as she will always do, if left entirely to herself.