Mannheim was in the seventh heaven.
"You won't have even that pleasure for long. They won't play you."
"So be it, then! Do you think I care about being a famous man?… Yes. I was making for that with all my might…. Nonsense! Folly! Idiocy!… As if the satisfaction of the vulgarest sort of pride could compensate for all the sacrifices—weariness, suffering, infamy, insults, degradation, ignoble concessions—which are the price of fame! Devil take me if I ever bother my head about such things again! Never again! Publicity is a vulgar infamy. I will be a private citizen and live for myself and those whom I love…."
"Good," said Mannheim ironically. "You must choose a profession. Why shouldn't you make shoes?"
"Ah! if I were a cobbler like the incomparable Sachs!" cried Christophe. "How happy my life would be! A cobbler all through the week,—and a musician on Sunday, privately, intimately, for my own pleasure and that of my friends! What a life that would be!… Am I mad, to waste my time and trouble for the magnificent pleasure of being a prey to the judgment of idiots? Is it not much better and finer to be loved and understood by a few honest men than to be heard, criticised, and toadied by thousands of fools?… The devil of pride and thirst for fame shall never again take me: trust me for that!"
"Certainly," said Mannheim. He thought:
"In an hour he will say just the opposite." He remarked quietly:
"Then I am to go and smooth things down with the Wagner-Verein?"
Christophe waved his arms.
"What is the good of my shouting myself hoarse with telling you 'No', for the last hour?… I tell you that I will never set foot inside it again! I loathe all these Wagner-Vereine, all these Vereine, all these flocks of sheep who have to huddle together to be able to baa in unison. Go and tell those sheep from me that I am a wolf, that I have teeth, and am not made far the pasture!"