“No?”
“No, I have not. You are a sort of dilettante, half nihilist, half financier. You would like to pass for a tranquil, well-balanced man, for what is called a philistine, but you cannot compass it.”
“I will compass it. It is true that I want to be a philistine, but a philistine out in the real world. All those great artists you people admire, Goethe, Ruskin, were really philistines, who were in the business of being interested in poetry and statues and pictures.”
“Moncada, you are a sophist,” said Kennedy. “Possibly I am wrong in this discussion,” retorted Cæsar, “but the feeling I have is right. Artists irritate me; they seem to me like old ladies with a flatulency that prevents their breathing freely.”
Kennedy laughed at the definition.
CHIC AND THE REVOLUTION
“I understand hating bad kings and conquerors; but artists! What harm do they do?” said Laura.
“Artists are always doing harm to the whole of humanity. They have invented an esthetic system for the use of the rich, and they have killed the Revolution. The chic put an end to the Revolution. And now everything is coming back; enthusiasm for the aristocracy, for the Church; the cult of kings. People look backward and the Revolutionary movement is paralysed. The people that irritate me most are those esthetes of the Ruskin school, for whom everything is religious: having money, buying jewels, blowing one’s nose... everything is religious. Vulgar creatures, lackeys that they are!”
“My brother is a demagogue,” said Laura ironically.
“Yes,” added Kennedy; “he doesn’t like categories.”