tions of a power that is universal in its
application. The artist whose lot in life it is to be a builder is none
the less an artist. The poet, though engineer or soldier, is none the
less a poet. There is the poetry of language, and there is also the
poetry of action. So also there is the art which expresses itself by
means of marble or canvas, and the art which designs a capitol, tapers a
spire, or plants a pleasure-ground. Nay, is not this very interfusion of
gifts, this universality of uses, in itself the bond of beauty which
girdles the world like a cestus? If poetry were only rhyme, and art only
painting, to what an outer darkness of matter-of-fact should we be
condemning nine-tenths of the creation!"

Mueller yawned, as if he would have swallowed me and my argument
together.

"You are getting transcendental," said he. "I dare say your theories are
all very fine and all very true; but I confess that I don't understand
them. I never could find out all this poetry of bricks and mortar,
railroads and cotton-factories, that people talk about so fluently
now-a-days. We Germans take the dreamy side of life, and are seldom at
home in the practical, be it ever so highly colored and highly flavored.
In our parlance, an artist is an artist, and neither a bagman nor an
engine-driver."

His professional pride was touched, and he said this with somewhat less
than his usual _bonhomie_--almost with a shade of irritability.

"Come," said I, smiling, "we will not discuss a topic which we can never
see from the same point of view. Doing art is better than talking art;
and your business now is to find a fresh subject and prepare another
canvas. Meanwhile cheer up, and forget all about Louis XI. and the
Hanging Committee. What say you to dining with me at the Trois Freres?
It will do you good."

"Good!" cried he, springing to his feet and shaking his fist at the
picture. "More good, by Jupiter, than all the paint and megilp that ever
was wasted! Not all the fine arts of Europe are worth a _poulet a la
Marengo_ and a bottle of old _Romanee_!"

So saying, he turned his picture to the wall, seized his cap, locked his
door, scrawled outside with a piece of chalk,--"_Summoned to the
Tuileries on state affairs_," and followed me, whistling, down the six
flights of gloomy, ricketty, Quartier-Latin lodging-house stairs up
which he lived and had his being.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLVIII.

I MAKE MYSE