about you. I know you like music--I know you like blue trout, because
you ate so many of them at lunch to-day. But what else do I know about
you? I don't even know what you thought of Parsifal. No, perhaps I'm
wrong there, because the fact that you've never mentioned it probably
shows that you couldn't. The symptom of not understanding anything about
Parsifal is to talk about it, and say what a tremendous impression it
has made on you."

"Ah! you've guessed right there," said Michael. "I couldn't talk about
it; there's nothing to say about it, except that it is Parsifal."

"That's true. It becomes part of you, and you can't talk of it any more
than you can talk about your elbows and your knees. It's one of the
things that makes you. . . ."

He turned over on to his back, and laid his hands palm uppermost over
his eyes.

"That's part of the glory of it all," he said; "that art and its
emotions become part of you like the food you eat and the wine you
drink. Art is always making us; it enters into our character and
destiny. As long as you go on growing you assimilate, and thank God
one's mind or soul, or whatever you like to call it, goes on growing for
a long time. I suppose the moment comes to most people when they cease
to grow, when they become fixed and hard; and that is what we mean by
being old. But till then you weave your destiny, or, rather, people and
beauty weave it for you, as you'll see the Norns weaving, and yet you
never know what you are making. You make what you are, and you never
are because you are always becoming. You must excuse me; but Germans are
always metaphysicians, and they can't help it."

"Go on; be German," said Michael.

"Lieber Gott! As if I could be anything else," said Falbe, laughing.
"We are the only nation which makes a science of experimentalism; we try
everything, just as a puppy tries everything. It tries mutton bones, and
match-boxes, and soap and boots; it tries to find out what its tail is
for, and bites it till it hurts, on which it draws the conclusion that
it is not meant to eat. Like all metaphysicians, too, and dealers in the
abstract, we are intensely practical. Our passion for experimentalism
is dictated by the firm object of using the knowledge we acquire. We
are tremendously thorough; we waste nothing, not even time, whereas
the English have an absolute genius for wasting time. Look at all your
games, your sports, your athletics--I am being quite German now, and