"Is Mr. Schöninger a pudding-stone man?" the young editor asked, when that gentleman had passed them by.
Dr. Porson's face unconsciously dropped its mocking. "If you should strike Mr. Schöninger in any way," he said, "you would find him flint. The only faults I see in the man are his excessive caution and secretiveness. He is here, evidently, only to get all the money he can, and, when he has enough, will wash his hands of us; therefore, wishes for no intimacies. That is my interpretation. He is a gentleman, however. A man must have the most perfect politeness of soul to salute Mme. Ferrier as he did. While they were speaking together, she actually had the air of a lady. See her look after him. It is an art which we critics cannot learn, sir, that of setting people in their best light. Of course it would spoil our trade if we did learn it; but, for all that, we miss something. Schöninger is a Jew, to be sure, but that signifies nothing. Each one to his taste. We no longer trouble ourselves about people's faith. When you say that a man believes this or that, it's as though you said, he eats this or that. The world moves. Why, sir, a few years ago, we wouldn't have spoken to a man who ate frogs any more than to a cannibal; and now we are so fond of the little reptiles that there isn't a frog left to sing in the swamps."
"But," Mr. Sales objected, "society has established certain rules—" then stopped, finding himself in deep water.
"Undoubtedly," the doctor replied, as gravely as though something had been said. "The Flat-head Indians now, who seem to have understood the science of phrenology, think it the proper thing to have a plateau on the top of the head. Their reason is, probably, a moral rather than an æsthetic one. They know that the peaceful and placable qualities, those which impel a man to let go, are kept in little chambers in the front top of the brain. They have other use for their attics. So they just clap a board on the baby's soft head, and press the space meant for such useless stuff as benevolence and reverence back, so as to increase the storage for the noble qualities of firmness and self-esteem. That is one of the rules of their society; and I have always considered it a most striking and beautiful instance of the proper employment of means to an end. There is a certain sublime and simple directness in it. No circuitous, century-long labor of trying to square the fluid contents of a round vessel, but just a board on the head. That, sir, should be the first step in evangelizing the heathen—shape their heads. When you want a man to think in a certain way, put a strong pressure on his contradictory bumps, and preach to him afterwards. That's what I tell our minister, Mr. Atherton. There he is now, that bald man with the fair hair. He is a glorious base. His great-grandfather was a conceited Anglo-Saxon, and he's the fourth power of him. The reason why he does not believe in the divinity of Christ is because he was not of Anglo-Saxon birth."
Here, across the pianissimo chorus which made the vocal accompaniment of an Alp-song, Miss Ferrier's brilliant voice flashed like lightning in clear, sharp zigzags, startling the two into silence.
"That wasn't bad," the doctor said when she ended.
The younger gentleman applauded with such enthusiasm that Annette blushed with pleasure. "She needs but one thing to make her voice perfect," he said, "and that is a great sorrow."
"Yes, as I was telling you some time ago," the doctor resumed, "we are a liberal and hospitable people in Crichton. We have no prejudices. Everybody is welcome, even the devil. We are æsthetic, too. We admire the picturesque. We wouldn't object to seeing an interesting family of children shot with arrows, provided they would fall with a grace, and their mother would assume the true Niobe attitude. In literature, too, how we shine! We have reached the sublime of the superficial. There's your Miss Carthusen, now, with her original poetry. How nicely she dished up that conceit of Montaigne's, that somebody is peculiar because he has no peculiarities. I've forgotten, it is so long since I read him. I haven't looked over the new edition that this poetess of ours has peeped into and fished a fancy out of. But yesterday I was charmed to see it scintillating, in rhymed lines, in the Olympian corner of The Aurora, over the well-known signature of Fleur-de-lis."
The young man looked mortified. He had never read Montaigne, and had announced this production as original and remarkable, firmly believing the writer to be a genius. But he did not choose to tell Dr. Porson that.
"What would you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows and his voice in a philosophical manner. "I must fill the paper; and it is better to put in good thought at second-hand than flat originals. How many know the difference?"