I could never understand
why they weren't popular. They would be printed; they would be praised
at length, and under distinguished signatures, in the reviews; they
would enjoy an unusual success of approbation; but--they wouldn't
_sell_, and they wouldn't get themselves sung at concerts. If they had
been too good, if they had been over the heads of people--but they
weren't. Plenty of work quite as good, quite as modern, yet no whit
more tuneful or interesting, was making its authors rich. We couldn't
understand it, we had to conclude it was a fluke, a question of
chance, of accident. Pair was still a very young man; he must go on
knocking, and some day--to-morrow, next week, next year, but some day
certainly--the door of public favour would be opened to him. Meanwhile
his position was by no means an unenviable one, goodness knows. To
have your orbit in the art world of Paris, and to be recognised there
as a star; to be written about in the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_; to
possess the friendship of the masters, to know that they believe in
you, to hear them prophesy, 'He will do great things'--all that is
something, even if your wares don't 'take on' in the market-place.
'It's a good job, though, that I haven't got to live by them,' Pair
said; and there indeed he touched a salient point.
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