alentin winked at one
or two of his own clique, and lit a cigar.

"You ask me," began Lepany, "to define the Ideal--in other words, to
define the indefinite, which alas! whether from a metaphysical, a
philosophical, or an aesthetic point of view, is a task transcending
immeasurably my circumscribed powers of expression."

"Gracious heavens!" whispered Mueller in my ear. "He must have been
reared from infancy on words of five syllables!"

"What shall I say?" pursued Lepany. "Shall I say that the Ideal is, as
it were, the Real distilled and sublimated in the alembic of the
imagination? Shall I say that the Ideal is an image projected by the
soul of genius upon the background of the universe? That it is that
dazzling, that unimaginable, that incommunicable goal towards which the
suns in their orbits, the stars in their courses, the spheres with all
their harmonies, have been chaotically tending since time began! Ideal,
say you? Call it ideal, soul, mind, matter, art, eternity,... what are
they all but words? What are words but the weak strivings of the
fettered soul that fain would soar to those empyrean heights where
Truth, and Art, and Beauty are one and indivisible? Shall I say
all this..."

"My dear fellow, you have said it already--you needn't say it again,"
interrupted Valentin.

"Ay; but having said it--having expressed myself, perchance with some
obscurity...."

"With the obscurity of Erebus!" said, very deliberately, a fat student
in a blouse.

"Monsieur!" exclaimed De Lepany, measuring the length and breadth of
the fat student with a glance of withering scorn.

The Byzantine was no less indignant.

"Don't heed them, _mon ami_!" he cried, enthusiastically. "Thy
definition is sublime-eloquent!"

"Nay," said Valentin, "we concede that Monsieur de Lepany is sublime; we
recognise with admiration that he is eloquent; but we submit that he is
wholly unintelligible."

And having delivered this parting shot, the club-footed realist slipped
his arm through the arm of the fat student, and went off to a distant
table and a game at dominoes.

Then followed an outburst of offended idealism. His own clique crowded
round Lepany as the champion of their school. They shook hands with him.
They embraced him. They fooled him to the top of his bent. Presently,
being not only as good-natured as he was conceited, but (rare phenomenon
in the Quartier Latin!) a rich fellow into the bargain, De Lepany called
for champagne