CLEMENS. No! But that isn't the end of the story. The paintings I'd done in 1830 were admired and hung in a museum till 1880. Taste then changed very quickly, and one day an important newspaper announced that their presence there was an outrage. So they were banished to the attic.
PRIOR (to the STRANGER). That's a good story!
CLEMENS. But it's still not finished. By 1890 taste had so changed again that a professor of the History of Art wrote that it was a national scandal that my works should be hanging in an attic. So the pictures were brought down again, and, for the time being, are classical. But for how long? From that you can see, young man, in what worldly fame consists? Vanitas vanitatum vanitas!
STRANGER. Then is life worth living?
PRIOR. Ask Pater Melcher, who is experienced not only in the world of deception and error, but also in that of lies and contradictions. Follow him: he'll show you the picture gallery and tell you stories.
STRANGER. I'll gladly follow anyone who can teach me something.
(PATER MELCHER takes the STRANGER by the hand and leads him out of the Chapter House.)
Curtain.
[Picture Gallery of the Monastery. There are mostly portraits of people with two heads.]
MELCHER. Well, first we have here a small landscape, by an unknown master, called 'The Two Towers.' Perhaps you've been in Switzerland and know the originals.