in from _me_, how the picture really suits
_him_. Of course I'm as rude and inconsiderate toward him, as a good
diplomat must be to conceal his subtlety. At that time, when as I've
already mentioned, we nosed around the exhibition, in doing which he
used me as his truffle-dog,[7] he had his pathetic days, when he would
pour forth the most incomprehensible tirades about the moral influence
of art, the priesthood of genius, and the incapacity of the German race
to produce any great artists--phrases which always made me think of the
famous symphony on the influence of blue on the arts, from the _Scenes
de la Vie de Boheme_. Well, one day he was riding his hobby: in art
only the highest developments have a right to exist. If he could be a
Caligula of aesthetics, he would wish that all mediocre painters had but
one neck, that he might sever it from the trunk at a single blow. I,
who've grown old enough to make a wry face at the theory of perfection
in art, dryly remarked that I knew spheres of life in which bungling
did still more harm. Was not a mediocre statesman, doctor, priest, nay
even an unskilful cook, far more injurious to the community, than a
poor devil of a painter, who quietly daubs his little square of
canvass, and meantime thinks himself an artist who understands how to
enjoy life and beauty far more than other mortals? Whom does he injure
except himself, if he sells nothing, and is compelled to starve with
his wife and children? And if he really helps to corrupt the taste of
the public, would the crime be any more reprehensible, than that
committed by a statesman who incites nations to war against each other,
or a cook who destroys our stomachs, let alone miserable doctors who
can't heal them again. No, I would not on any account wish the innocent
mediocrities away, unless they were blatant fools or scoundrels, and
procured large orders by intrigue. A hundred bunglers were necessary,
before one genius distinguished himself; but whether this eternal star
enjoyed as much happiness amid all its splendor, as the majority of
these ephemeral insects derived from their feeble spark, was very
questionable, etc., etc. His Highness condescended to laugh and call me
a paradoxical sophist. 'Look at this picture, my dear baron,' he
exclaimed stepping before a genuine zaunkoenig, which really did cut a
very poor figure. 'Will you, even in the presence of this sufficiently
pitiful production, assert that the kingdom of heaven