like other women to see that you are not too _passee_
to be every whit as improper as if you were twenty. You like to
advertise your successes as it were with drum and trumpet, because if
you did not, people might begin to doubt that you had any. You like all
that, and you like to feel there is nothing you do not know and no
length you have not gone, and so you ring all the changes on all the
varieties of intrigue and sensuality, and go over the gamut of sickly
sentiment and nauseous license as an orchestra tunes its strings up
every night! That is what all you people call love; I am content enough
to have no knowledge of it."

* * *

"I would rather have the crudest original thing than the mere galvanism
of the corpse of a dead genius. I would give a thousand paintings by
Froment, Damousse, or any of the finest living artists of Sevres, for
one piece by old Van der Meer of Delft; but I would prefer a painting on
Sevres done yesterday by Froment or Damousse, or even any much less
famous worker, provided only it had originality in it, to the best
reproduction of a Van der Meer that modern manufacturers could produce."

"I think you are right; but I fear our old pottery-painters were not
very original. They copied from the pictures and engravings of Mantegna,
Raffaelle, Marcantonio, Marco di Ravenna, Beatricius, and a score of
others."

"The application was original, and the sentiment they brought to it.
Those old artists put so much heart into their work."

"Because when they painted a _stemma_ on the glaze they had still feudal
faith in nobility, and when they painted a Madonna or Ecce Homo they had
still childlike belief in divinity. What does the pottery-painter of
to-day care for the coat of arms or the religious subject he may be
commissioned to execute for a dinner service or a chapel? It may be
admirable painting--if you give a very high price--but it will still be
only manufacture."

"Then what pleasant lives those pottery painters of the early days must
have led! They were never long stationary. They wandered about
decorating at their fancy, now here and now there; now a vase for a
pharmacy, and now a stove for a king. You find German names on Italian
ware, and Italian names on Flemish gres; the Nuremberger would work in
Venice, the Dutchman would work in Rouen. Sometimes, however, they were
accused of sorcery; the great potter, Hans Kraut, you remember, was
feared by his townsmen as po