al axioms. It might be
supposed," he went on, "that you are a mere youth, whereas your coat
has evidently seen its best years; it might be supposed that you had
leaped about like a satyr; nay, some might maintain that you are a
vagabond, because you are out here in the country and play the fiddle;
but I am influenced by no such superficial considerations; I form my
judgment on your delicately chiseled nose; I take you for a strolling
genius." His ambiguous phrases irritated me; I was about to retort
sharply. But he gave me no chance to speak. "Observe," he said, "how
you are puffed up by a modicum of praise. Retire within yourself
and ponder upon your perilous vocation. We geniuses--for I am one
too--care as little for the world as it cares for us; without any ado,
in the seven-league boots which we bring into the world with us, we
stride on directly into eternity. A most lamentable, inconvenient
straddling position this--one leg in the future, where nothing is to
be discerned but the rosy morn and the faces of future children, the
other leg still in the middle of Rome, in the Piazza del Popolo,
where the entire present century would fain seize the opportunity to
advance, and clings to the boot tight enough to pull the leg off! And
then all this restlessness, wine-bibbing, and hunger solely for an
immortal eternity! And look you at my comrade there on the bench,
another genius; his time hangs heavy on his hands here and now, what
under heaven is he to do in eternity? Yes, my highly-esteemed comrade,
you and I and the sun rose early together this morning, and have
pondered and painted all day long, and it was all beautiful--and now
the drowsy night passes its furred sleeve over the world and wipes
out all the colors." He kept on talking for a long while, his hair all
disheveled with dancing and drinking, and his face looking deadly pale
in the moonlight.

But I was seized with a horror of him and of his wild talk, and when
he turned and addressed the sleeping painter I took advantage of the
opportunity and slipped round the table, without being perceived
by him, and out of the garden. Thence, alone and glad at heart, I
descended through the vine-trellises into the wide moonlit valley.

The clocks in the city were striking ten. Behind me, in the quiet
night, I still heard an occasional note of the guitar, and at times
the voices of the two painters, going home at last, were audible. I
ran on as quickly as possible, that