I raised my eyes in astonishment:
“I do not quite understand this change of subject, Magnus. On the contrary, the museums have revealed to me a new and more attractive side of man....”
He laughed.
“Love for mankind?... Well, well, do not take offense at the jest, Wondergood. You see: everything that man does in crayon is wonderful—but repulsive in painting. Take the sketch of Christianity, with its sermon on the Mount, its lilies and its ears of corn, how marvelous it is! And how ugly is its picture with its sextons, its funeral pyres and its Cardinal X.! A genius begins the work and an idiot, an animal, completes it. The pure and fresh wave of the ocean tide strikes the dirty shore—and returns dirty, bearing back with it corks and shells. The beginning of love, the beginning of the Roman Empire and the great revolution—how good are all beginnings! And their end? And even if a man here and there has managed to die as beautifully as he was born, the masses, the masses, Wondergood, invariably end the liturgy in shamelessness!”
“Oh, but what about the causes, Magnus?”
“The causes? Apparently we find concealed here the very substance of man, of animal, evil and limited in the mass, inclined to madness, easily inoculated with all sorts of disease and crowning the widest possible road with a standstill. And that is why Art is so much above Man!”
“I do not understand.”
“What is there incomprehensible about it? In art it is the genius who begins and the genius completes. You understand: the genius! the fool, the imitator or the critic is quite powerless to change or mar the paintings of Velasquez, the sculpture of Angelo or the verse of Homer. He can destroy, smash, break, burn or deface, but he is quite powerless to bring them down to his own level—and that is why he so detests real art. You understand, Wondergood? His paw is helpless!”
Magnus waved his white hand and laughed.
“But why does he guard and protect it so assiduously?”