“It is indeed enough to make one’s heart ache!” interrupted Flemming.  “Only think of Johnson and Savage, rambling about the streets of London at midnight, without a place to sleep in; Otway starved to death; Cowley mad, and howling like a dog, through the aisles of Chichester Cathedral, at the sound of church music; and Goldsmith, strutting up Fleet Street in his peach-blossom coat, to knock a bookseller over the pate with one of his own volumes; and then, in his poverty, about to marry his landlady in Green Arbour Court.”

“A life of sorrow and privation, a hard life, indeed, do these poor devil authors have of it,” replied the Baron; “and then at last must get them to the work-house, or creep away into some hospital to die.”

“After all,” said Flemming with a sigh, “poverty is not a vice.”

“But something worse,” interrupted the Baron; “as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress, because he could not pay her bill.  Hewas the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot; at whose representation the great pun was made;—­I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of Heidelberg.  As one of the performers was singing the line, `L’amour a vaincu Loth,’ (vingt culottes,) a voice from the pit cried out, `Qu’il en donne une a l’auteur!’”

Flemming laughed at the unseasonable jest; and then, after a short pause, continued;

“And yet, if you look closely at the causes of these calamities of authors, you will find, that many of them spring from false and exaggerated ideas of poetry and the poetic character; and from disdain of common sense, upon which all character, worth having, is founded.  This comes from keeping aloof from the world, apart from our fellow-men; disdainful of society, as frivolous.  By too much sitting still the body becomes unhealthy; and soon the mind.  This is nature’s law.  She will never see her children wronged.  If the mind, which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample upon its slave, the slave is never generousenough to forgive the injury; but will rise and smite its oppressor.  Thus has many a monarch mind been dethroned.”

“After all,” said the Baron, “we must pardon much to men of genius.  A delicate organization renders them keenly susceptible to pain and pleasure.  And then they idealize every thing; and, in the moonlight of fancy, even the deformity of vice seems beautiful.”

“And this you think should be forgiven?”

“At all events it is forgiven.  The world loves a spice of wickedness.  Talk as you will about principle, impulse is more attractive, even when it goes too far.  The passions of youth, like unhooded hawks, fly high, with musical bells upon their jesses; and we forget the cruelty of the sport in the dauntless bearing of the gallant bird.”

“And thus doth the world and society corrupt the scholar!” exclaimed Flemming.

Here the Baron rang, and ordered a bottle of Prince Metternich.  He then very slowly filled his pipe, and began to smoke.  Flemming was lost in a day-dream.