"Enough, friend Beyle. You are a charlatan. Your knowledge of the human heart is on a par with your taste in literature. You abominate Flaubert because his prose is more rhythmic than yours."
"No matter. I'm right. Mérimée, your pupil, is your master at every point."
I could no longer contain myself, and, bursting with curiosity, I cried:
"Pardon me, dear masters, for interrupting such a luminous altercation, but, notwithstanding the queerness of the situation, may I not say that I meet in the flesh, Jonathan Swift and Henry Beyle-Stendhal?"
"Discovered, by the eternal Jehovah!" roared Swift, adding an obscene phrase, which I discreetly omit. Stendhal took the incident coolly.
"As I am rediscovered about every decade by ambitious young critics anxious to achieve reputations, I am not disturbed by our young friend here. Your apology, monsieur, is accepted. Pray, join us in a fresh drink and conversation." But I was only thirsty for more talk, oceans of talk. I eagerly asked Stendhal, who regarded me with cynical eyes, all the while fingering his little whisker: "Did you ever hear Chopin play?"
"Who," he solemnly asked in turn, "is Chopin?"
"He was at his best in the forties, and as you didn't die till----"
"Pardon me, monsieur. I never died. Your Chopin may have died, but I am immortal."
"You venerable Struldbrug," giggled Swift. I was disagreeably impressed, yet held my ground:
"You must have met him. He was a friend of Balzac--his music was then in vogue at Paris--" I stumbled in my speech.
"He probably means that little Polish piano-player who dangled at the petticoats of George Sand," interpolated Swift.
"I knew Cimarosa, Rossini I saw, but I never heard of Chopin. As for the Sand woman, that cow who chewed and rechewed her literary cud--don't mention her name to me, please. She is the village pump of fiction; water, wet water. Balzac was bad enough." My heart sank. Chopin not even remembered by a contemporary! This then is fame. But the immortality of Stendhal, of Swift--what of that? Its reality was patent to me. Perhaps Balzac, Sand, Flaubert were still alive. I propounded the question. Swift answered it.
"Yes, they are alive. My Struldbrugs are meant to symbolise the immortality of genius. Only stupid people die. Sand is a barmaid in London. Balzac is on the road selling knit-goods, and a mighty good drummer he is sure to be; but poor Flaubert has had hard luck. He was the reader to a publishing house, and forced to pass judgment on the novels of the day--favourable judgment, mind you, on the popular stuff. He nearly burst a blood-vessel when they gave him a Marie Corelli manuscript to correct--to correct the style, mind you, he, Flaubert! The gods are certainly capricious. Now the old chap--he has aged since 1880--is in New York reading proof at a daily newspaper office. He sits at the same desk with Ben de Casseres, and every time he mutters over the rhythm of a sentence Ben raps him on the knuckles, and says: