"My little Mintie, I am so glad to see you. Will
you come tomorrow to the studio?"
"Surely."
"Well, you shall see! You shall see! First of all, I am going to give up painting, do you understand?"
"Are you going into business?"
"Listen to me! Painting is humbug, my little Mintie."
He grew animated, moved about the room briskly, waving his arms.
"Giotto! Mantegna! Velasques! Rembrandt! Well, Rembrandt! Watteau! Delacroix! Ingres! Yes and then who? No, that is not true? Painting depicts nothing, expresses nothing, it's all humbug! It's all right for the art critics, bankers, and generals who have their portraits on horseback with a howitzer shell exploding in the foreground. But to render a glimpse of the sky, the shade of a flower, the ripple of the water, the air, you understand? The air—all this impalpable and invisible nature, with a paste of paint colors! With a paste of paint colors?"
Lirat shrugged his shoulders.
"With a paste of paint colors coming out of tubes, with a paste of paint colors made by the dirty hands of chemists, with a paste of paint colors, heavy, opaque and which sticks to the fingers like jelly! Tell me . . . painting . . . what humbug! No, but you will admit, my little Mintie, that it is humbug! A drawing, an engraving, a two-tone piece . . . that's the thing! That does not deceive, it's honest . . . the amateurs sneer at that kind of work and don't presume to bother you about it . . . it evokes no empty enthusiasm in their 'salons'! But real art, majestic art, artistic art is there. Sculpture . . . yes . . . when it is beautiful, it shakes you. . . . But next to it is the art of drawing, drawing . . . my little Mintié with-
