My mice, as has
been said, were overfed and lazy, and I used to have to poke them
through their parts with sticks from the wings; but this was a detail
which a superior imagination should have accepted as one of the
conventions of the art. It made the servants laugh, however; and when
I would step to the front in person, and, with tears in my eyes,
beseech them to be sober, they would but laugh the louder. 'Bless you,
sir, they're only mice--_ce ne sont que des souris_,' the cook called
out on one such occasion. She meant it as an apology and a
consolation, but it was the unkindest cut of all. Only mice, indeed!
To me they had been a young gentleman and lady lost in the Desert of
Sahara, near to die for the want of water, and about to be attacked,
captured, and sold into slavery by a band of Bedouin Arabs. Ah, well,
the artist must steel himself to meet with indifference or derision
from the public, to be ignored, misunderstood, or jeered at; and to
rely for his real, his legitimate, reward on the pleasure he finds in
his work.
And now there befell a great change in my life. Our home in Paris was
broken up, and we moved to St. Petersburg. It was impossible to take
my mice with us; their cage would have hopelessly complicated our
impedimenta. So we gave them to the children of our concierge.
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