"YOU
are the doctor, I suppose," said Augustus Pokewhistle,
smiling from his bed at the immense man who had arrived secretly while
he slept. "It is kind of you to come, but I don't think you can help
me. However, you are here, I will tell you what is wrong with me. I am an
artist. I paint pictures and I draw drawings..."
- "But..."
"You
are going to tell me that you are not interested in the story of my life,"
Augustus laughed bitterly. "You are one of the uncaring
public, and it is of no importance to you if a clever young man should take to
his bed at the height of his youth, never to rise again. But I suppose you have
been sent here by some interfering so-called friend of mine to save me from my
suffering, and I must therefore explain my illness. And you cannot understand
my illness unless I tell you the story of my life. "
"
I was delicately brought up, and it soon became clear that I was not an
ordinary boy. At the age of seven I won a prize for a drawing of an animal. We
will forget the fact that I had intended my drawing to represent sunset over London. After that my
proud parents provided me with plenty of pencils and paper and gave me the
opportunity of studying under great painters. At the age of twenty-one, I
started a business as a painter of people, and painted eleven pictures of my
own face. Nobody seemed to want them, and if you go into my sitting room, you
will see them hanging sadly on the wall, looking down at the empty chair which
I will never sit in again. For I am certain that I shall never rise from this
bed ..."
"Nobody
came to have their pictures painted, and I had no desire to paint any more of
myself. Although it may seem impossible, I could no longer get any real
pleasure out of it after I had finished the eleventh, and this proves that one
can get tired of even the most heavenly beauty... "
- "But..."