among men who
will appreciate what I may show you. You love, you understand, perfumes.
You have even wished for a new art--don't forget that there are others
in the world to whom the seven arts have become a thrice-told tale, to
whom the arts have become too useful. All great art should be useless.
Yet architecture houses us; sculpture flatters us; painting imitates us;
dancing is pure vanity; literature and the drama, mere vehicles for
bread-earning; while music--music, the most useless art as it should
have been--is in the hands of the speculators. Moreover music is too
sexual--it reports in a more intense style the stories of our loves.
Music is the memory of love. What Prophet will enter the temple of the
modern arts and drive away with his divine scourge the vile
money-changers who fatten therein?" Her voice was shrill as she paced
the room. A very sibyl this, her crest of hair agitated, her eyes
sparkling with wrath. He missed the Cumaean tripod.

"There is an art, Baldur, an art that was one of the lost arts of
Babylon until now, one based, as are all the arts, on the senses.
Perfume--the poor, neglected nose must have its revenge. It has outlived
the other senses in the aesthetic field."

"What of the palate--you have forgotten that. Cookery, too, is a fine
art," he ventured. His smile irritated her.

"Yes, Frenchmen have invented symphonic sauces, they say. But again,
eating is a useful art; primarily it serves to nourish the body. When
man was wholly wild--he is a mere barbarian to-day--his sense of smell
guarded him from his foes, from the beasts, from a thousand dangers.
Civilization, with its charming odours of decay,--have you ever ventured
to savour New York?--cast into abeyance the keenest of all the senses.
Little wonder, then, that there was no art of perfume like the arts of
vision and sound. I firmly believe the Hindoos, Egyptians, and the
Chinese knew of such an art. How account for the power of theocracies?
How else credit the tales of the saints who scattered perfumes--St.
Francis de Paul, St. Joseph of Cupertino, Venturini of Bergamo?"

"But," he interrupted, "all this is interesting, fascinating. What I
wish to know is what form your art may take. How marshal odours as
melodies in a symphony, as colours on a canvas?" She made an impatient
gesture.

"And how like an amateur you talk. Melody! When harmony is infinitely
greater in music! Form! When colour is infinitely greater than line! The