"In sculpture! No — no! there the high ideal must at least be essential!"
"Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam O'Shanter."
"Ah!" said the old gentleman, shaking his head, "I live very much out of the world, I see. I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be admired?"
"On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the excuse for attacking everybody else. But then our critics have discovered that Shakespeare is so real!"
"Real! The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met with in actual life — who has never once descended to a passion that is false, or a personage who is real!"
I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I perceived that my companion was growing a little out of temper. And he who wishes to catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to disturb the waters. — I thought it better, therefore, to turn the conversation.
"Revenons à nos moutons," said I; "you promised to enlighten my ignorance as to the Rosicrucians."
"Well!" quoth he, rather sternly; "but for what purpose ? Perhaps you desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the rites?"
"What do you take me for! Surely, were I so inclined, the fate of the Abbé de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idly of the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph. Everybody knows how mysteriously that ingenious personage was deprived of his life, in revenge for the witty mockeries of his Comte de Gabalis."
