with him as but the proof of faith to its own dominant positions.
They were but characteristics, needing no apology with the initiated,
or welcome even, as savouring of the master's peculiarities of
perfection. He listened, he looked round freely, but always now with
the ear, the eye, of his favourite poet. It had been a lesson, a
doctrine, the communication of an art,--the art of placing the
pleasantly aesthetic, the welcome, elements of life at an advantage,
in one's view of it, till they seemed to occupy the entire surface;
and he was sincerely grateful for an undeniable good service.

And yet the gifted poet seemed but to have spoken what was already in
Gaston's own mind, what he had longed to say, had been just going to
say; so near it came, that it had the charm [56] of a discovery of
one's own. That was an illusion, perhaps; it was because the poet
told one so much about himself, making so free a display of what
though personal was very contagious; of his love-secrets especially,
how love and nothing else filled his mind. He was in truth but
"love's secretary," noting from hour to hour its minutely changing
fortunes. Yes! that was the reason why visible, audible, sensible
things glowed so brightly, why there was such luxury in sounds,
words, rhythms, of the new light come on the world, of that wonderful
freshness. With a masterly appliance of what was near and familiar,
or again in the way of bold innovation, he found new words for
perennially new things, and the novel accent awakened long-slumbering
associations. Never before had words, single words, meant so much.
What expansion, what liberty of heart, in speech: how associable to
music, to singing, the written lines! He sang of the lark, and it
was the lark's voluble self. The physical beauty of humanity lent
itself to every object, animate or inanimate, to the very hours and
lapses and changes of time itself. An almost burdensome fulness of