There are many people who have been endowed with one master-passion,
that "like Aaron's serpent swallows up the rest," but Larry's
ingenuous breast harboured a nest of such serpents. During his three
years at Oxford, he had stormed from one enthusiasm to another; he had
rowed, and boxed, and spouted politics, and, beginning with music, had
stormed on through poetry and the drama, to painting.
Having taken a moderate degree, he had rushed in pursuit of this
latest charmer to Paris, and the waters of the Quartier Latin then
closed over him. Occasionally a bubble would rise from those clouded
deeps, and a letter to Aunt Freddy, or to Barty Mangan, would briefly
announce his continued existence. Sometimes he wrote to Christian, and
would expand a little more to her; telling her of how one Professor
had remarked of his work that it was now _presque pas mal_, and
that this dizzying encomium had encouraged him to begin a _Salon_
(its subject described at length, with elucidatory sketches); further,
that he had taken a very jolly _atelier_, and "dear old Chose"
was "on the Jury," and would try and get him accepted, with much more
to the same effect, music, politics, horses and hounds, forgotten as
though they had never been.
Christian received these effusions with a characteristic mixture of
respect for the artistic effort that they described, and of amused,
almost pitying comprehension of the enthusiasm that they revealed.
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