od what he
was saying.

He seemed to have some suspicion of this, for he did not go on talking,
but was silent for some time. These silences were common between the
two.

At last he said:

"I think where the Maestro is wrong is in making the two quarrel. They
cannot quarrel. There is no art without life, and no life without art.
Look at a puppet-play--the fantoccini--it means life and it means art."

"I never saw a puppet-play," said Mark.

"Well, you have seen us," said Carricchio; "we are much the same. We
move ourselves--they are moved by wires; but we do just the same
things--we are life and we are art, in the burletta we are both. I often
think which is which--which is the imposture and which is the masque.
Then I think that somewhere there must be a higher art that surpasses
the realism of life--a divine art which is not life but fashions life.

"When I look at you, little one," Carricchio went on, "I feel almost as
I do when the violins break in upon the jar and fret of the wittiest
dialogue. Jest and lively fancy--these are the sweets of life, no
doubt--and humorous thought and speech and gesture--but they are not
this divine art, they are not rest. They shrivel and wither the brain.
The whole being is parched, the heart is dry in this sultry, piercing
light. But when the stringed melodies steal in, and when the rippling,
surging arpeggios and crescendos sweep in upon the sense, and the
stilled cadences that lull and soothe--then, indeed, it is like moisture
and the gracious dew. It is like sleep; the strained nerves relax; the
overwrought frame, which is like dry garden mould, is softened, and the
flowers spring up again."

Carricchio paused; but as Mark said nothing, he went on again.

"The other life is gay, lively, bright, full of excitement and
interest, of tender pity even, and of love--but this is rest and peace.
The other is human life, but what is this? Art? Ah! but a divine art.
Here is no struggle, no selfish desire, no striving, no conflict of love
or of hate. It is like silence, the most unselfish thing there is. I
have, indeed, sometimes thought that music must be the silence of
heaven."

"The silence of heaven!" said Mark, with open eyes. "The silence of
heaven! What, then, are its words?"

"Ah! that," said the old clown, smiling, but with a sad slowness in his
speech, "is beyond me to tell. I can hear its silence, but not its
voice."

V.

THE private theatre in the palace