Caravaggio Amor Vincit Omnia painting

Caravaggio Amor Vincit Omnia paintingRaphael Saint George and the Dragon paintingPablo Picasso The Old Guitarist painting
bound to be a success. I’ve discussed it all with Beckthorpe—that’s the chap who’s selling me the farm. You see the crop has failed every year so far—first coffee, then seisal, then tobacco, that’s all you can grow there, and the year Beckthorpe grew seisal, everyone else was making a packet in tobacco, but seisal was no good; then he grew tobacco, but by then it was he ought to have grown, and so on. He stuck it nine years. Well if you work it out mathematically, Beckthorpe says, in three years one’s bound to strike the right crop. I can’t quite explain why but it is like roulette and all that sort of thing, you see.”
“Yes, darling.”
Hector gazed at her little, shapeless, mobile button of a nose and was lost again ... “Play up, play up,” and after the match the smell of crumpets being toasted over a gas-ring in his study ...

II

Later that evening he dined with Beckthorpe, and, as he dined, he grew more despondent.