Why the old man listened so patiently to these childish stories no one could tell; perhaps he did not hear them. He himself said that the presence of Mark had the effect of music upon his jaded and worn sense. But, indeed, there was beneath Carricchio's mechanical buffoonery and farce a sober and pathetic humour, which was almost unconscious, and which was now, probably owing to advancing years, first becoming known either to himself or others.
"The Maestro has been talking to me this morning," he said one day. "He says that life is a wretched masque, a miserable apology for existence by the side of art; what do you say to that?"
"I do not know what it means," said Mark; "I neither know life nor art, how can I tell?"
"That is true, but you know more than you think. The Maestro means that life is imperfect, struggling, a failure, ugly most often; art is perfect, complete, beautiful, and full of force and power. But I tell him that some failure is better than success; sometimes ugliness is a finer thing than beauty; and that the best art is that which only reproduces life. If life were fashioned after the most perfect art you would never be able to cry, nor to make me cry, as you do over your beautiful tales."
Mark tried to understand this, but failed, and was therefore silent. Indeed it is not certain whether Carricchio himself understood what he was saying.
He seemed to have some suspicion of this, for he did not go on talking, but was silent for some time. These silences were common between the two.
At last he said:
"I think where the Maestro is wrong is in making the two quarrel. They cannot quarrel. There is no art without life, and no life without art. Look at a puppet-play—the fantoccini—it means life and it means art."
"I never saw a puppet-play," said Mark.
"Well, you have seen us," said Carricchio; "we are much the same. We move ourselves—they are moved by wires; but we do just the same things—we are life and we are art, in the burletta we are both. I often think which is which—which is the imposture and which is the masque. Then I think that somewhere there must be a higher art that surpasses the realism of life—a divine art which is not life but fashions life.