erting the
threatened storm by a timely word. But Jansen had already risen to his
feet, and stood confronting the professor with the most unruffled
composure.

"What would I say?" he cried, loud enough to be understood by all. "I
would say that in every art there are artists and mechanics, and that
the latter know as little of the god whom they serve as the sexton who
sweeps out the church and hands about the contribution-box. Of all the
arts there is but one which does not know the dust of the workshop,
that has no underlings and assistants, or, at the worst, merely
charlatans who fancy themselves masters; and even these know nothing of
that kind of mechanical readiness which murders the soul and deadens
thought. For that reason it is the highest and most divine of the arts,
before which the others bow, and which they ought to worship as their
mistress and goddess. To you, who are in the habit of lecturing upon
aesthetics, I should be ashamed to explain myself more fully by saying
that I refer to poetry, were it not that in your toast you offered an
insult to the majesty of this, the highest muse, which I can only
excuse upon the supposition that you have strayed from the temple of
the true divinity, and wandered by mistake into a mosque."

With these words he raised his glass, held it before the flame of the
lamp and slowly drank it off. A deathlike silence followed; the
professor, who was apparently on the point of making a rather
irritating reply, was restrained by a meaning look from the countess.
She herself had looked at the sculptor while he spoke, with a peculiar,
searching, flashing look, and merely threatened him playfully with her
finger as he now advanced toward her as if to take leave.

"Stay," she whispered to him, "I have a word to speak with you."

Then she turned to the others, and invited them to be seated again and
not to think of breaking up so soon. But her most cordial words and
demeanor could not banish a certain uncomfortable feeling that had
taken possession of the company. No one could be induced to take a
place at the piano, and a court musician, who still had a violin sonata
_in petto_, shut up his instrument-case with conspicuous noise and took
his leave of the countess, bestowing upon Jansen as he passed a look
full of meaning. The others followed his example, and, finally, even
the professor, who took his defeat most easily, entered upon his
retreat after addressing a few jesting rema