Then he came home occasionally,
and always saw us; but I generally contrived, on such occasions, to do
some frightful thing that shocked every nerve he had, and he avoided me
instinctively as he would an electric torpedo; but--do you believe?--I
never had an idea of such a thing, till, when sailing from the South,
so changed, I remembered things, and felt intuitively how it must have
been. Shortly after I went away, he visited Europe. I had been at home a
year, and now we heard he had returned; so for two years he hadn't seen
me. He had written a great deal to Lu,--brotherly letters they were,--he
is so peculiar,--determining not to give her the least intimation of
what he felt, if he did feel anything, till he was able to say all. And
now he had earned for himself a certain fame, a promise of greater; his
works sold; and if he pleased, he could marry. I merely presume this
might have been his thought; he never told me. A certain fame! But
that's nothing to what he will have. How can he paint gray, faint,
half-alive things now? He must abound in color,--be rich, exhaustless:
wild sea-sketches,--sunrise,--sunset,--mountain mists rolling in turbid
crimson masses, breaking in a milky spray of vapor round lofty peaks,
and letting out lonely glimpses of a melancholy moon,--South American
splendors,--pomps of fruit and blossom,--all this affluence of his
future life must flash from his pencils now.
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