e
had scarcely sipped, as if he were counting the rising pearls within
it.

"My honored master," he heard a voice say at his side, "we have not yet
touched glasses with one another."

He quietly looked up at the speaker.

"Do you care very much to have your resolution passed by a strictly
unanimous vote?"

"My resolution?"

"I mean your exaltation of music above all other arts. If it was merely
a polite phrase to catch the applause of the musicians and the devotees
of music, I have nothing to say against it. It is always expedient to
howl with the wolves. But in case you expressed your real opinion, and
ask me now, on my conscience and between ourselves, whether I share it,
you must permit me to draw back my glass in silence, and, if I drink,
to think my own thoughts in so doing."

"Do what you can't help doing, _carissimo_!" replied the professor,
with a thoughtful nod of the head. "I know very well that you worship
other gods, and only esteem you the more for having the true artist's
courage to be one-sided. To your health!"

Jansen held his glass in the same position, and did not seem in the
least inclined to approach it to that of the professor.

"I am very sorry to sink in your estimation," he said, "but I am really
not quite so one-sided as you think. I not only love music, but it is
fairly necessary to my existence; and if I am deprived of it for any
length of time, my spirit is as ill as my body would be if it were
forced to go without its bath."

"A strange comparison!"

"And yet, perhaps, it is more appropriate than it would seem at first.
Doesn't a bath stimulate and excite, calm, or quicken the blood, wash
away the grime of everyday life from the limbs, and soothe all manner
of pain? But it stills neither hunger nor thirst, and he who bathes too
often feels his nervous strength relaxed, his blood over-excited, and
his organs toned down to a voluptuous languor. Isn't it just so with
music? It is possible our thanks are due to her alone that mankind has
gradually lost its bestiality, and grown nearer the likeness of God.
But this is equally certain, that men who now carry this enjoyment to
excess sink gradually into a vegetating dream-life, and that if a time
should come when music should really be exalted as the highest art, the
highest problems of humanity would remain unsolved, and the very marrow
of mankind would be forceless and feeble.--I know well," he continued,
without noticing that the