Here, then, were the immortal creations which were soon to astound the world, come, in person, to pay their respects to the author of their being.  He arose and made a profound obeisance to the august company, which they one and all returned, though in such a queer variety of ways, that the author, albeit aware that every individual had the best of reasons for employing, under certain special circumstances, his or her particular manner of salute, could scarcely forbear smiling at the effect they all together produced in his own unpretending study.

“Your welcome visit,” said the author, addressing his guests with all the geniality of which he was master (for they seemed somewhat stiff and ill-at-ease), “gives me peculiar gratification.  I regret not having asked some of my friends, the critics, up here to make your acquaintance.  I am sure you would all come to the best possible understanding directly.”

“They cannot fathom me,” exclaimed a strikingly handsome young man, with pale lofty brow, and dark clustering locks, who was leaning with proud grace against the mantel-piece.  “They may take my life, but they cannot read my soul.”  And he laughed, scornfully, as he always did.

[Illustration:  THE NOONING.—­AFTER DARLEY.]

This was a passage from that famous ante-mortem soliloquy in which the hero of the romance indulges in the last chapter but one.  The author, while, of course, he could not deny that the elegance of the diction was only equaled by the originality of the sentiment, yet felt a slight uneasiness that his hero should adopt so defiant a tone with those who were indeed to be the arbiters of his existence.

“I’m afraid there’s not enough perception of the comme il faut in him to suit the every-day world,” muttered he.  “To be sure, he was not constructed for ordinary ends.  Do you find yourself at home in this life, madame?” he continued aloud, turning to a young lady of matchless beauty, whose brief career of passionate love and romantic misery the author had described in thrilling chapters.  She raised her luminous eyes to his, and murmured reproachfully:  “Why speak to me of Life? if it be not Love, it is Life no longer!”

It was very beautiful, and the author recollected having thought, at the time he wrote it down, that it was about the most forcible sentence in that most powerful passage of his book.  But it was rather an exaggerated tone to adopt in the face of such common-place surroundings.  Had this exquisite creature, after all, no better sense of the appropriate?

“No one can know better than I, my dear Constance,” said the author, in a fatherly tone, “what a beautiful, tender, and lofty soul yours is; but would it not be well, once in a while, to veil its lustre—­to subdue it to a tint more in keeping with the unvariegated hue of common circumstance?”

“Heartless and cruel!” sobbed Constance, falling upon the sofa, “hast thou not made me what I am?”