George smiled. Demeter struck him as so handsome and as still young in spite of the grey hairs on his temple. "How old are you then, Herr Stanzides? if it isn't a rude question."
"Thirty-seven. I don't say I am old, but I am getting old. Men usually begin to talk about getting old when they have been old for a long time."
They sat down on the seat at the end of the garden, just where it runs into the wall. They had a view of the hotel and of the great terrace on the garden. The upper storeys with their verandahs were hidden from them by the foliage of the trees. George offered Demeter a cigarette and took one himself. And both were silent for a while.
"I heard that you, too, are leaving Vienna," said Demeter.
"Yes, that's very probable ... if of course I get a job in some opera. Well, even if it isn't this year it is bound to be next."
Demeter sat with legs crossed over each other, gripped one of them tightly by the knee, and nodded. "Yes, yes," he said, and blew the smoke slowly through his lips in driblets. "It is really a fine thing to have a talent. In that case one is bound to feel a bit different sometimes, even about beginning to grow old. That is really the one thing I could envy a man for."
"You have no reason to at all. Anyway, people with talent are not really to be envied. At any rate, only people with genius. And I envy them probably even more than you do. But I think that talents like yours are something much more definite, something much sounder so to speak. Of course one doesn't always happen to be in form.... But at any rate, one always achieves something quite respectable if one can do anything at all, while people in my line, if they are not in form are no better than old age pensioners."
Demeter laughed. "Yes, but an artistic talent like yours lasts longer and develops more and more as the years go on. Take Beethoven, for instance. The Ninth Symphony is really the finest thing he did. Don't you think so. And what about the second part of Faust?... While we are bound to go back as the years go on—we can't help it—even the Beethovens amongst us. And how early it begins, apart from quite rare exceptions! I was at my prime for instance at twenty-five. I've never done again what I had in me at twenty-five. Yes, my dear Baron, those were times."
"Come, I remember seeing you win a race two years ago against Buzgo, who was the favourite then.... Why, I even betted on him...."
"My dear Baron," interrupted Stanzides, "you take it from me, I know the reason why I left off improving. One can feel a thing like that oneself. And that's why no one knows so well as the sportsman when he's beginning to grow old. And then no further training is any good. The whole thing then becomes purely artificial. And if any one tells you that that's not the case, then he's simply ... but here come the ladies."