“—of an acrobat! There’s inspiration for you! The trapeze is high art; it soars—very high!”
“Another word and I’ll knock you down!” was Phil’s answer.
“Calm yourself, mon cher! calm yourself!”
But Phil meanwhile was changing visibly. The life he had been leading for some time had worn him out. He now worked less and less, and came more and more under the influence of Socrate. He expended his energy at the café, and in his turn traced out masterpieces on the table. He explained his ideas to Socrate, and discussed them until the landlord turned out the gas and wiped off the masterpieces with his napkin.
“Phil will go far!” Socrate said as he clapped him on the shoulder, adding like a truly superior man:
“You haven’t twenty francs about you?”
One day Socrate brought with him, wrapped up in a newspaper, an object which he laid on the bench.
“My guitar,” he said.
Socrate’s guitar! Every one was acquainted with it. Socrate, painter-poet-philosopher, was a musician as well. He “heard colors” and “saw sounds.” He had undertaken a gigantic work—to set the Louvre to music and make colors perceptible to the ear.
He took notes on the spot, colored photographs, and then came home and played them on his guitar with the hand of a genius. Violet was si; he made sol out of blue; green was a fa—and so on up to red, which was do.