"How glad I am to hear you talk like this," said Rose. "I hope M. Lanfranc shares your ideas."
"M. Lanfranc is completely converted to my ideas."
"My father will do nothing without consulting me, but I shall feel more certain of getting my way if you are my ally."
"I will be your ally then."
"Yours is a sensible method," said M. Hervart. "You may know that I am the keeper of the Greek sculpture at the Louvre. I entered that necropolis at a time when the old system of restoration had begun to be abandoned. They were oscillating between two methods—re-making or doing nothing. The second has prevailed. You will have noticed that our marbles can be divided into two groups: those which have no antiquity but in the name, and those which have no antiquity except in the material. In old days, when they had found a bust, they manufactured a new head for it, new arms and new legs; then they wrote underneath: 'Artemis (restored), Minerva (restored), Nymph with a bow (restored),' according to the fancy of the cast-maker or as they were guided by a somnolent archæology. I think that they certainly filled some gaps in this way. If the system had gone on being followed, we should doubtless be in possession at the present time of a complete Olympus; while as it is there are plenty of empty places left in the assembly of our gods. Since we decided to do nothing, our galleries have grown rich in curious anatomical odds and ends—legs and hands that look like those ex-voto offerings that used, as a matter of fact, to hang in Greek sanctuaries; heads that look as though they had, like Orpheus's head, been rolled by storms among the pebbles of the sea; busts so full of holes that they seem to have served as targets for drunken soldiers. In short nothing comes to us now but fragments—fragments of great archæological interest, but whose value as works of art is almost nothing. Wouldn't some intermediate method be preferable? By intermediate I mean intelligent. Intelligence is the art of reconciling ideas and producing a harmony. A head of Aphrodite with a broken nose ceases to be a head of Aphrodite. I ask for beauty and they give me a museum specimen. If they want me to admire it, they must make a new nose; if they don't want to make a new nose, then they must divide up the Louvre into two museums, the æsthetic museum and the archæological museum."
Having finished speaking, he looked first of all at Rose, thus showing that he had need, before everything else, of her approbation. Rose's face lit up with happiness. Her eyes answered, "My dear, I admire you. You're a god."
These movements were understood by Leonor, who had been trying for some few moments to guess what were the relations between Rose and Hervart.
"They are in love," he said to himself. "Hervart has a genius for making love. I am twenty-eight, which is my only point of superiority over him. And even that is very illusory, for it is only women who know something about life, whether through experience or through the confidences of some one else, who pay any attention to a man's age. A woman is as old as her face: a man is as old as his eyes. Hervart has a pair of fine blue eyes, gentle and lively, ardent. But what do I care? I don't desire the good graces of this innocent."
While reflecting thus, he had answered M. Hervart, "I quite agree with you. People tend too much to-day to confound the curious, rare or antique with the beautiful. The æsthetic sense has been replaced by a feeling of respect."
"The process was perhaps inevitable," said M. Hervart. "In any case it suits a democracy. People have no time to learn to admire, but one can very quickly learn to respect. The intelligence is docile, but taste is recalcitrant."