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lly reached Verlaine, whose music is the echo of music heard in misty mediaeval parks while the peacock dragging by with its twilight tail, utters shrill commentary on such moonshine. After that I reached Chopin and found him too dangerous, too treacherous, too condensed, the art too filled out; and so I finally landed in the arms of Wagner, and I've been there ever since." "Look here, Cintras, you're prose-mad and you've landed nowhere." Berkeley lighted one of Hodson's cigarettes. "When a new, big fellow comes along you follow him until you find out how he does the trick and then you get bored. Don't you remember the day you rushed into my studio and yelled, 'Newman is the only man who wrote prose in the nineteenth century,' and then persisted in spouting long sentences from the 'Apologia'? First it was Arnold, then it was Edmund Burke." "It will always be Burke," interrupted Cintras. "Then it was Maurice de Guerin, and I suppose it will be Flaubert forever and ever." They all laughed. "Yes, Billy, it will always be Gustave Flaubert, and I worship him more and more every day. It took him forty years to write four books and three stories, and, as Henry James says, he deliberately planned masterpieces." Hodson broke in: "You literary men make me tired. Why, if I turned out copy at the rate of Slobsbert--what's his name?--I'd starve. What's all the fuss about, anyhow? Write natural English and any one will understand you"--"Ah, natural English, that's what one man writes in a generation," sighed Cintras. "And when you want something great," continued the young man, "why, read a good 'thriller' about the great Cemetery Syndicate, and how it robbed the dead for gold fillings in teeth. The author just slings it out--and such words!" "Yes, with a whitewash brush." Berkeley scowled. "Why," pursued Hodson, unmoved, "why don't you get married, Cintras, and work for your living? Then you'll have to write syndicate stuff and that will knock the nonsense out of you. Or, fall in love and be miserable like me." Hodson paused to drink. "O triste, triste etait mon ame, A cause, a cause d'une femme." "That's Verlaine; Hoddy, my boy, when you grow up, quit newspapering and become cultured, you may appreciate its meaning and beauty." "When I am cultured I'll be a night city editor; that's my ideal," said the youth, stoutly. "Let's go over to Merville's room and make him play Chopin," suggested Pauch, the sculp
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