meister, I am not
as those who would serve Art with a bottle of champagne under each arm.
I want no fumes in my brain and no clod between my fingers when I meet
the Muse face to face."

"You are right there," said Ritter thoughtfully, lowering his glass:
"It is like a pearl coming out of the throat of a swine to hear the
tones from Bauermann's fingers, when he can scarce keep himself at the
pianoforte, and his head rocks between his shoulders like a top
falling. His sense of beauty is all that is left of him, and that
seems over ripe, like a fruit left too long in the sun. Materialism is
the artist's curse. Their heads are in the clouds and their feet are
in the slough.--Pah!"

The Kapellmeister tapped his glass sharply with the edge of his knife,
and called without turning: "Hey--a Muenchener, Fraeulein!"

He scanned the face of his companion curiously. The Violinist seemed
to be dreaming; he held the Rhine wine in his hand, gazing down into
its liquid gold as if a vision lay at the bottom of the glass.

"Velasco!"

The Musician half raised his lids and then lowered them again.

"Are you asleep, Velasco?"

"Potztausend--no! I hear what you say! You speak of musicians and
swine in the same breath. It is true. You ought to know, who wave the
baton over them year in and year out. They rise like a balloon and
then they fall--!"

He dropped his hands on the table with an expressive gesture. "They
give out through the senses; they take in the same way." He lifted the
glass, staring into it again: "But it is not through pleasure, not
pleasure, Ritter, never pleasure, that their senses are developed, and
they learn to feel, and give back what they have felt. They think it
is pleasure, and they fall into the error, and their art dies within
them sooner or later. It is like some fell thing clutching at their
feet, and when they try to rise, it seizes them and drags them back,
and they sink finally--they sink!"

The Kapellmeister leaned forward on the table, scanning the young face
opposite him: "A year ago, Velasco, your chin was round and full; from
the look of your mouth one could tell that you had lived and enjoyed.
You were like the Faun, happy and careless, and your art was to you
like a plaything. You cared only for your Stradivarius, and when you
were not playing, you were nothing, not even a man. All your genius
was concentrated there in your brows where the music lies hidden. Your
virility wa