“I am still young—at least in heart—you unkind man.” The falcon I let off was once more going astray to miss the prey: she would let me have no chance. But I managed to bring her back on the track by retorting: “Being able to say that sort of thing in the face of a man, you must be counted among the not young.”
“Arn’t you, who say that, also well up in age? And you mean to say that you still delight in reading of love, Cupid and all that kind of trash?”
“Yes, they are delightful and will not cease to interest me even till my last hour.”
“Well I declare! That is how you can give yourself up to a profession like yours, I suppose?”
“Precisely so. Because I am an artist, I have no need to read through novels from the beginning to the end. But they interest me no matter what part I read. It delights me to talk with you, so much so that I should be glad to be all the time talking with you, while I am here. If you would have it, I have not the slightest objection, on my part, to falling incandescently, in love with you. That would be most interesting. But, however intensely in love, there is no need that we should become husband and wife. One must need read through novels from the beginning to the end, as long as one feels the necessity of love ending in a marriage.”
“The artist is, then, he who makes an inhuman love?”
“Not inhuman but unhuman. The plots of novels do not count at all, because we read them unhumanly. You see, I open the book thus, as in a lottery drawing, and I read the first page that lies flat before me. And there is the charm of the thing.”
“That does sound interesting. Then I wish you would tell me something of what you are reading. I should like to know how interesting it really is.”
“To tell you would not do. Don’t you see, the charm of a picture would all be gone, if you simply made a narration of it.”
“Ho, ho, ho, read it to me, then, please.”