"I have none," said Entragues.
"Write for the Madonna of Botticelli," said Calixte.
"That is what I am doing," said Entragues.
"A lovely and noble confident. Do you remember what the page says in the Gitana? I know it by heart. It is the portrait of our mistress, since it is that of poetry, Listen to it in the stately language of Cervantes: 'La poesia es una bellissima doncella, casta, honesta, discreta, aguda, retirada, y que se contien en las limites de la discrecion mas alta: es amiga de la soledad, las fuentes la entretien, los prados la consuelan, los arboles la desenojan, los flores le alegran; y finalmente deleyta y ensena a quantos con ella communican.'"
Their talk often ended thus, by the recollection of an old impression, in mystic and shy plaints. Calixte was gentle towards life, which had not shown him the same clemency. No one knew what he sought, excepting the fine editions of old poets and the mysterious modern prints: his disdain of all vainglory was more sincere than that of Entragues, in whom heredity determined a dim need of social domination. Entragues strove to scorn life. During the long and painful reckonings of his tutelage, he had undergone, without external revolt, the humiliation of a lowly situation, a horror of the forced fabrication of worthless copy for miserly publishers. The verdict of several lawsuits had despoiled him of the relics of his patrimony; but he would have consented to a Castilian wretchedness rather than abandon his dream. He wished to regild his name, and, encircled by glory, he hated the present, as an obstacle, but he would have liked to assume the existence that was due him, to put it on like a ducal cloak, without astonishment, with the satisfaction of a lord returning to his domains. He was waiting; nothing would have surprised him, but neither did the nothing surprise him: hence, the infinite contradictions of his character and conduct. He knew his nature and had applied to himself, with a joy which revealed the triplicity of his soul, this line of Dante:
Che sensa speme vivemo in disio.
"And without hope live in desire." His triplicity, a quite elementary scholastic division, he thus explained: a soul that wills, a soul that knows the uselessness of willing, a soul that watches the struggle of the other two and writes the Iliad of it.
He had no naïveté, save perhaps in his rare unfortunate crises, for in his normal state his proud indifference of principle saved him from anger and its consequences. Thus, his indignation against Moscowitch had become deadened after the first thought of vengeance, and he was the man, on matters that did not touch the essentials, to give up a thing in despair, send the handle after the ax. But he was also the man to lift and unite the fallen instrument. He was the man to do the contrary of what he pretended to do, but as his acts were a spectacle to himself, and the most amusing of all spectacles, he never let it sadden him beyond measure. He knew himself full of the unexpected and liked it: ah! without this he surely would have been wearied, for the rest of the world unrolled itself to his wearied eyes but as a circus performance, truly too monotonous; the world was peopled by vague and distant phantoms thrown on the eternally trod course.
Calixte was much more simple: all dream, all faith, all spontaneity. No one could guess at the aim of his movements, and, in short, he had no other aim than movement itself. Older than Entragues by five or six years, and having attained a certain renown as a stylist and delicate thinker, he was unconcerned with it; he always kept the tone and the manners of a beginner, carried his manuscripts here and there, preferably to the little new reviews, not, like others, with the purpose of lording it there, but rather from a need of silence, not to have to discuss, to demonstrate, by a necessary charlatanry, the merit of a work.
He earned little, because of his indifference, for he could easily have won a lucrative position in journalism. But he loved, above all things, to work freely and with dignity.