Dorriforth. You couldn’t put it better. That’s the life that art, with Auberon’s permission, gives us; that’s the distinction it confers. This is why the greatest commonness is when our guide turns out a vulgar fellow—the angel, as we had supposed him, who has taken us by the hand. Then what becomes of our escape?
Florentia. It’s precisely then that I complain of him. He leads us into foul and dreary places—into flat and foolish deserts.
Dorriforth. He leads us into his own mind, his own vision of things: that’s the only place into which the poet can lead us. It’s there that he finds “As You Like It,” it is there that he finds “Comus,” or “The Way of the World,” or the Christmas pantomime. It is when he betrays us, after he has got us in and locked the door, when he can’t keep from us that we are in a bare little hole and that there are no pictures on the walls, it is then that the immediate and the foolish overwhelm us.
Amicia. That’s what I liked in the piece we have been looking at. There was an artistic intention, and the little room wasn’t bare: there was sociable company in it. The actors were very humble aspirants, they were common—
Auberon. Ah, when the French give their mind to that—!
Amicia. Nevertheless they struck me as recruits to an interesting cause, which as yet (the house was so empty) could confer neither money nor glory. They had the air, poor things, of working for love.
Auberon. For love of what?
Amicia. Of the whole little enterprise—the idea of the Théâtre Libre.
Florentia. Gracious, what you see in things! Don’t you suppose they were paid?
Amicia. I know nothing about it. I liked their shabbiness—they had only what was indispensable in the way of dress and scenery. That often pleases me: the imagination, in certain cases, is more finely persuaded by the little than by the much.