Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/137

 effort was not to have been foreseen; it partook really, in the case of this particular figure, of the miraculous. He was never afterwards to surpass the thing, to which a good judge here and there had been known to attribute a felicity of young inspiration achieved by no other piece of the period. To Rowland it seemed to justify grandly the highest hopes of his friend, and he said to himself that if he had staked his reputation on bringing out a young lion he ought now to pass for a famous connoisseur. In his elation he travelled up to Carrara and selected at the quarries the most magnificent block of marble he could find, and when it came down to Rome the two young men had a "celebration." They drove out to Albano, breakfasted boisterously (in their respective measure) at the inn, and lounged away the day in the sun on the top of Monte Cavo. Roderick's head was full of ideas for other works, which he described with infinite spirit and eloquence, as vividly as if they were ranged on their pedestals before him. He had irrepressible reactions; things he saw in the streets, in the country, things he heard and read, effects he found just missed or half expressed in the works of others, wrought on his mind for provocation, and he was terribly uneasy until in some form or other he had taken up the glove and set his lance in rest.

The Adam was put into marble, and all the world came to see it. Of the criticisms passed upon it this history undertakes to offer no record; over many of them the two young men had a daily laugh for a month, and some of the formulas of the 103