"Isn't he a corker?" irreverently demanded our friend. "He is not even as old as he looks. He doesn't eat vegetables, when thirsty he drinks anything he can get, and smokes day and night. And yet he calls himself an idealist." The old painter smiled. "I suppose I have been described as Waring to you, because I knew Robert Browning. I did vanish from the sight of my friends for years, but only in the attempt to conquer paint, not to achieve money or kingship, like the original Alfred Domett, called Waring in the poem. But when I returned from Italy I was a stranger in a strange land. No one remembered me. I had last seen Elihu Vedder at Capri. Worst of all, I had forgotten that with time fashions change in art as in dress, and nowadays no one understands me, and, with the exception of Arthur Davies, I understand no one. I come from the Venetians, Davies from the early Florentines; his line is as beautiful as Pollajuolo. I love gold more than did Facino Cane of Balzac. Gold, ah! luscious gold, the lost secret of the masters. Tell me, do you love Titian?" We swore allegiance to the memory of Titian. The artist seemed pleased. "You younger men are devoted to Velasquez and Hals--too much so. Great as painters, possibly greatest among painters, their souls never broke away from the soil like runaway balloons. They miss height and depth. Their colour never sings like Titian's. They surprise secrets in the eyes of their sitters, but never the secret surprised by the Italian. I sat at his feet, before his canvases, fifty years, and I'm further away than ever--" Our friend interrupted this rhapsody.
"Look here, Albertus, you man with a name out of Thomas Aquinas, don't you think you are playing on your visitors' nerves, just to set them on edge with expectancy? I've heard this choral service for the glorification of Titian more than once, and I've inevitably noticed that you had a trump of your own up your sleeve. You love Titian. Well, admit it. You don't paint like him, your colour scheme is something else, and what you are after you only know yourself. Come! trot out your Phantom Ship or The Cascade of Gold, or, better still, that landscape with a river-bank and shepherds." The old man gravely bowed. Then he manipulated the light, placed a big easel in proper position, fumbled among the canvases that made the room smaller, secured one and placed it before us. We drew a long breath. "Richard Wagner, not Captain Maryatt, was the inspiration," murmured the master.