He met a number of his last winter’s friends again, and called upon Madame Grandoni, upon Miss Blanchard, and upon Gloriani, shortly after their return.  The ladies gave an excellent account of themselves.  Madame Grandoni had been taking sea-baths at Rimini, and Miss Blanchard painting wild flowers in the Tyrol.  Her complexion was somewhat browned, which was very becoming, and her flowers were uncommonly pretty.  Gloriani had been in Paris and had come away in high good-humor, finding no one there, in the artist-world, cleverer than himself.  He came in a few days to Roderick’s studio, one afternoon when Rowland was present.  He examined the new statue with great deference, said it was very promising, and abstained, considerately, from irritating prophecies.  But Rowland fancied he observed certain signs of inward jubilation on the clever sculptor’s part, and walked away with him to learn his private opinion.

“Certainly; I liked it as well as I said,” Gloriani declared in answer to Rowland’s anxious query; “or rather I liked it a great deal better.  I did n’t say how much, for fear of making your friend angry.  But one can leave him alone now, for he ’s coming round.  I told you he could n’t keep up the transcendental style, and he has already broken down.  Don’t you see it yourself, man?”

“I don’t particularly like this new statue,” said Rowland.

“That ’s because you ’re a purist.  It ’s deuced clever, it ’s deuced knowing, it ’s deuced pretty, but it is n’t the topping high art of three months ago.  He has taken his turn sooner than I supposed.  What has happened to him?  Has he been disappointed in love?  But that ’s none of my business.  I congratulate him on having become a practical man.”

Roderick, however, was less to be congratulated than Gloriani had taken it into his head to believe.  He was discontented with his work, he applied himself to it by fits and starts, he declared that he did n’t know what was coming over him; he was turning into a man of moods.  “Is this of necessity what a fellow must come to”—­he asked of Rowland, with a sort of peremptory flash in his eye, which seemed to imply that his companion had undertaken to insure him against perplexities and was not fulfilling his contract—­“this damnable uncertainty when he goes to bed at night as to whether he is going to wake up in a working humor or in a swearing humor?  Have we only a season, over before we know it, in which we can call our faculties our own?  Six months ago I could stand up to my work like a man, day after day, and never dream of asking myself whether I felt like it.  But now, some mornings, it ’s the very devil to get going.  My statue looks so bad when I come into the studio that I have twenty minds to smash it on the spot, and I lose three or four hours in sitting there, moping and getting used to it.”

Rowland said that he supposed that this sort of thing was the lot of every artist and that the only remedy was plenty of courage and faith.  And he reminded him of Gloriani’s having forewarned him against these sterile moods the year before.