Roberto did come the following afternoon. Bernardo was, as usual, not at home. Esther was highly excited. Oswald arrived at four. He was a blond young man, with reddish eyes, very tall and long-haired. He seemed to suffer an intense disappointment at finding Roberto alone. They conversed. To Roberto, Oswald appeared to be an insufferable pedant. He took the floor to say, in professorial tones, that he could not endure either the Spaniards or the French. He was going to write a book, entitled The Anti-Latin, in which he would consider the Latin peoples as degenerates who should be conquered by the Germans, the sooner the better. He boiled with indignation because folks spoke of France. France did not exist. France had accomplished nothing. France had erected around itself a Chinese wall. As Björnson had said, a long time before, the world’s greatest composer was Wagner; the greatest dramatist, Ibsen; the greatest novelist, Tolstoi; the greatest painter, Böcklin; yet in France they continued to speak of Sardou, Mirbeau, and other similar imbeciles. The original writers of Paris plagiarized Nietzsche; the Latin composers had copied and ransacked the Germans; French science did not exist; France had neither philosophy nor art. France’s historic achievement was a complete illusion. The whole Latin race was a matter for scorn.
Roberto made no answer to this diatribe, but scrutinized Oswald closely instead. This huge pedant of a fellow struck him as so absurd. A woman had made an appointment with him and here he was babbling sociology!
Esther came in. The German saluted her very gravely, and asked her in an aside the reason for this appointment. Esther said nothing. Roberto tactfully left the studio and began to stride up and down the corridor.
“Does Fanny know now that you’ve come here?” asked Esther of Oswald.
“Yes, I think she does.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“Why?”
“Because then she’ll come, too.”
“Has she anything to do with this affair?”