"Oh, Tolstoy, Tolstoy ... by all means," murmured Tyne.
"Which do you think greater?" said Sophy to Amaldi.
"Well...." Amaldi reflected an instant. "When Tolstoy regards the human race, one feels that he sees it made up of little Tolstoys. When Dostoievsky looks inward—it is as if he saw all humanity in himself—in Dostoievsky."
"Capital!" cried Ferrars. Sophy looked at Amaldi, pleased at hearing her own conviction so well put into words. Tyne regarded the young man dreamily.
"How charming is the multiplicity of opinion," he then said. "If I ever sacrificed it would be to the goddess of Variety. Now to me, Tolstoy is by far the greater figure of the two."
Ferrars had begun to talk to the woman on his right and was not listening any longer. The women on the left and right of Tyne and Amaldi were eagerly attentive.
"Why?" asked several voices at once.
"Because Tolstoy is the greatest Immoralist of his time," said Tyne serenely.
"Oh! Oh!" came several voices.
"He is immoral in spirit where others are only immoral in fact," continued the poet, quite unmoved. "Never was there so irreligious, so immoral a spectacle as that Titan in the throes of religion. For this religion of his violates and thwarts every natural instinct and desire of his pagan nature. To deny one's true nature is irreligion. To be egotistically selfless is the paradox of the inferno. Besides, is there a greater sin against genius than to worship the commonplace? Now virtue is the norm—the level convention invented by civilised man. The crime of virtuous genius is that it becomes null. The cult of virtue is the eighth deadly sin—in a creative mind. Fancy a virtuous Creator!"