“Well, well,” said Mr. Froitzheim. “So you want to be an artist? Art, as Michael Angelo said, is a music and mystery that very few are privileged to understand. I have been asked by the committee to give my opinion, and I feel that it is a serious responsibility. It is no light thing to advise a young man to take up an artistic career.”
“Yes, Edgar, that is very true,” said his wife, with a wide reassuring smile at Mendel, whom she thought a very charming, very touching little figure, standing there drinking in the words as they fell from Edgar’s lips.
Mr. Froitzheim produced a pair of spectacles and balanced them on his nose.
“It is a serious thing, not only for the sake of the young man but also for Art’s sake. The sense of beauty is a dangerous possession. It is like a razor, safe enough when it is sharp, injurious when it is blunted. Your future, it seems, depends upon my word. I am to say whether I think your work promising enough to justify your being sent to a school. I asked you to bring more of your work to confirm the impression made by what I have already seen.”
He spoke in an alert, sibilant voice so quickly that his words whirled through Mendel’s mind and conveyed very little meaning. Only the words “a music and mystery” lingered and grew. They were such lovely words, and expressed for him something very living in his experience, something that lay, as he would have said, below his heart. He loosened the string of his untidy parcel and took out the picture of the apples. There were music and mystery in it, and he held it very lovingly as he offered it to Mrs. Froitzheim, much as she had just offered him the bowl of flowers.
“Very well painted indeed,” said she, and Mendel winced. He turned to the artist as to an equal, expecting not so much praise as recognition. Mr. Froitzheim took the picture from him and went near the window. He became more solemn than ever.
“This is much better than the drawings. Have you always painted still-life?”
“I painted what there was at home.”
“Have you studied the still-life in the galleries? Do you know Fantin-Latour’s work?”
“No,” said Mendel blankly.