Those wonderful speeches you made during your
election campaign at Angers. How the people worshipped you! You
might have carried your portfolio had you persisted. But you poets
are such restless fellows. And after all, I daresay you have really
accomplished more by your plays. You remember--no, of course, how
could you?--the first night of La Conquette. Shall I ever forget it!
I have always reckoned that the crown of your career. Your marriage
with Madame Deschenelle--I do not think it was for the public good.
Poor Deschenelle's millions--is it not so? Poetry and millions
interfere with one another. But a thousand pardons, my dear Paul.
You have done so much. It is only right you should now be taking
your ease. Your work is finished."
The Poet does not answer. Sits staring before him with eyes turned
inward. The Painter, the Musician: what did the years bring to
them? The Stranger tells them also of all that they have lost: of
the griefs and sorrows, of the hopes and fears they have never
tasted, of their tears that ended in laughter, of the pain that gave
sweetness to joy, of the triumphs that came to them in the days
before triumph had lost its savour, of the loves and the longings and
fervours they would never know. All was ended. The Stranger had
given them what he had promised, what they had desired: the gain
without the getting.
Then they break out.
"What is it to me," cries the Painter, "that I wake to find myself
wearing the gold medal of the Salon, robbed of the memory of all by
which it was earned?"
The Stranger points out to him that he is illogical; such memories
would have included long vistas of meagre dinners in dingy
restaurants, of attic studios, of a life the chief part of which had
been passed amid ugly surroundings.
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