"Do what you can't help doing, carissimo!" replied the professor, with a thoughtful nod of the head. "I know very well that you worship other gods, and only esteem you the more for having the true artist's courage to be one-sided. To your health!"
Jansen held his glass in the same position, and did not seem in the least inclined to approach it to that of the professor.
"I am very sorry to sink in your estimation," he said, "but I am really not quite so one-sided as you think. I not only love music, but it is fairly necessary to my existence; and if I am deprived of it for any length of time, my spirit is as ill as my body would be if it were forced to go without its bath."
"A strange comparison!"
"And yet, perhaps, it is more appropriate than it would seem at first. Doesn't a bath stimulate and excite, calm, or quicken the blood, wash away the grime of everyday life from the limbs, and soothe all manner of pain? But it stills neither hunger nor thirst, and he who bathes too often feels his nervous strength relaxed, his blood over-excited, and his organs toned down to a voluptuous languor. Isn't it just so with music? It is possible our thanks are due to her alone that mankind has gradually lost its bestiality, and grown nearer the likeness of God. But this is equally certain, that men who now carry this enjoyment to excess sink gradually into a vegetating dream-life, and that if a time should come when music should really be exalted as the highest art, the highest problems of humanity would remain unsolved, and the very marrow of mankind would be forceless and feeble.--I know well," he continued, without noticing that the people in the salon were listening to his monologue, and that groups of listeners had approached the door--"I know well that these are heresies which one cannot utter in certain circles without being stoned a little. Nor would I care to discuss the question with a musician, for he would scarcely understand what I really mean. The effect of this art 'of thinking in tones' is gradually to dissolve all that is solid in the brain into a softened mass, and only the great, truly creative talents can preserve the capacity and disposition for other intellectual interests. That the highest masters of every art stand on an equality with one another, I need not say. As to the others, the expression which some one used in regard to lyric poets maybe justly used toward them--'They are like geese whose livers have been fattened; excellent livers, but sick geese.' How can the balance of the intellectual powers be preserved, when any one sits nine hours a day at an instrument and continually practises the same exercises? And for that reason I should be careful how I tried to convince a musician of the error of his fanaticism. But to you, who are an æsthetic by profession--"
He chanced to let his eyes wander toward the door, and broke off suddenly. He noticed now, for the first time, before what an audience he had been speaking. The professor observed his surprise, and grinned maliciously.
"You are talking to your own destruction, my dear sir," he said, raising his voice. "You might just as well declare in a mosque that Allah was not Allah, and Mohammed was not his prophet, as to assert to this crowd of enthusiastic youths that there is anything more divine than music, or that devotion to it, its service and its cultivation, could ever be pushed too far. Entrench yourself behind your blocks of marble, so that we may grant you peace on favorable terms. What would you say if some one declared that whoever uses his mallet nine hours of the day must, in the course of time, lose his sense of hearing and sight, that his intellectual power would finally become deadened and petrified, and that his soul would get to be as dusty and muddy as the blouse he wears when he hammers his stones?"
A unanimous shout of bravos arose from the group standing nearest him, and a murmur of satisfaction ran through the salon.
The countess, who now for the first time became aware of the dialogue, was seen hastily approaching, with the intention of averting the threatened storm by a timely word. But Jansen had already risen to his feet, and stood confronting the professor with the most unruffled composure.
"What would I say?" he cried, loud enough to be understood by all. "I would say that in every art there are artists and mechanics, and that the latter know as little of the god whom they serve as the sexton who sweeps out the church and hands about the contribution-box. Of all the arts there is but one which does not know the dust of the workshop, that has no underlings and assistants, or, at the worst, merely charlatans who fancy themselves masters; and even these know nothing of that kind of mechanical readiness which murders the soul and deadens thought. For that reason it is the highest and most divine of the arts, before which the others bow, and which they ought to worship as their mistress and goddess. To you, who are in the habit of lecturing upon æsthetics, I should be ashamed to explain myself more fully by saying that I refer to poetry, were it not that in your toast you offered an insult to the majesty of this, the highest muse, which I can only excuse upon the supposition that you have strayed from the temple of the true divinity, and wandered by mistake into a mosque."