Yes - perhaps. Wait, wait. Leave me now.«
 

                                  Chapter LII

            »La même fermeté qui sert à résister à l'amour sert aussi à le
            rendre violent et durable; et les personnes foibles qui sont
            toujours agitées des passions n'en sont presque jamais véritablement
            remplies.«
                                                               La Rochefoucauld.
 
Among Deronda's letters the next morning was one from Hans Meyrick of four
quarto pages, in the small beautiful handwriting which ran in the Meyrick family
 
        My dear Deronda, - In return for your sketch of Italian movements and
        your view of the world's affairs generally, I may say that here at home
        the most judicious opinion going as to the effects of present causes is
        that »time will show.« As to the present causes of past effects, it is
        now seen that the late swindling telegrams account for the last year's
        cattle plague - which is a refutation of philosophy falsely so called,
        and justifies the compensation to the farmers. My own idea that a
        murrain will shortly break out in the commercial class, and that the
        cause will subsequently disclose itself in the ready sale of all
        rejected pictures, has been called an unsound use of analogy; but there
        are minds that will not hesitate to rob even the neglected painter of
        his solace. To my feeling there is great beauty in the conception that
        some bad judge might give a high price for my Berenice series, and that
        the men in the city would have already been punished for my ill-merited
        luck.
            Meanwhile I am consoling myself for your absence by finding my
        advantage in it - shining like Hesperus when Hyperion has departed -
        sitting with our Hebrew prophet, and making a study of his head, in the
        hours when he used to be occupied with you - getting credit with him as
        a learned young Gentile, who would have been a Jew if he could - and
        agreeing with him in the general principle, that whatever is best is for
        that reason Jewish. I never held it my forte to be a severe reasoner,
        but I can see that if whatever is best is A and B happens to be best, B
        must be A, however little you might have expected it beforehand. On that
        principle, I could see the force of a pamphlet I once read to prove that
        all good art was Protestant. However, our prophet is an uncommonly
        interesting sitter - a better model than Rembrandt had for his Rabbi -
        and I never come away from him without a new discovery. For one thing,
        it is a constant wonder to me that, with all his fiery feeling for his
        race and their traditions,