Almost
all young people pass through the early stages of existence by
some known gambit, which, has always a definite influence upon
their later lives, but never determines the latter entirely. The
game is played between humanity on the one side and the unforeseen
on the other; but that which can really not be foretold in some
measure rarely presents itself until the first effects of love
have been felt, a period which, to continue the simile, may be
compared in chess to the operation of castling. Then comes the
first crisis, and the merest tyro knows how much may depend upon
whether he castles on the king's side or on the queen's.
Now the nature of Faustina's first love was such as to make it
probable that it would end in some uncommon way. There was
something fatal in the suddenness with which her affection had
grown and had upset the balance of her judgment. It is safe to say
that not one young girl in a million would have behaved as she had
done on the night of the insurrection in Rome; not one in a
hundred thousand would, in her position, have fallen in love with
Gouache.
The position of the professional artist and of the professional
man of letters in modern European society is ill defined. As a man
who has been brought up in a palace would undoubtedly betray his
breeding sooner or later if transported to live amongst a gang of
thieves, so a man who has grown to years of discretion in the
atmosphere of studios or in the queer company from which most
literary men have sprung, will inevitably, at one time or another,
offend the susceptibilities of that portion of humanity which
calls itself society.
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