The Painter.
And fighting, let you run me through? No, Marshal! That I must refuse.
See! Each of us two has his art. You employ the sword, I the palette.
How would it be if I should say to you now in accordance with the
practice of my craft: Come, we will paint on a wager? And you do not
know the merest precept of light-value, azure, modelling. Very well,
you are a dead man for me. Afterward you might--that is allowed
you--come to life into the bargain, if you liked.
The Marshal.
You are mocking me, surely!
The Painter.
Surely, no! Yet every fight should be a fight on a wager. Because in a
fight between men you are a complete man, I should like to show that I
too can do something. You are laughing.
The Marshal.
One who is so nimble with his tongue has, it is said, a sure hand.
Perhaps, too, many a device unknown to me is concealed in the wielding
of your sword. So be quick, I pray you. I hear the sound of footsteps.
Do you stare at me in silence?
The Painter.
Still a little farther to the right!
The Marshal.
What does that mean?
The Painter.
So!--And that may not be looked at, because one is mouldering away! I
cannot get over it. Never yet have I found lines like those, never yet
a working so gloriously true in the frontal plexus of veins, in the
eyebrows, as if one by pure will became a giant. The body delicate--the
cheeks thin; for Nature when she fashions her best, makes no boast of
vigorous strength.... The wish overpowers me--Before I die, sir, I must
paint you.
The Marshal.
You seem altogether mad.
The Painter.
I beg you to grant me a respite. I shall be glad to let you kill me,
yet only after your portrait is finished.
The Marshal.
And by your creation, you hope to obtain all manner of favour, and
quietly to escape. You are cunning indeed.
The Painter.
It is the peculiar pleasure of magnanimity to suspect the magnanimity
of others.
The Marshal.
Are you reading me a lecture?
The Painter.
It seems that I must. I must make an effort to win your heart's esteem,
which is worth more to me than any amount of foolish play with briskly
wielded swords.
The Marshal.
By heaven, sir, you risk a great deal!
The Painter.
I risk nothing. I am a man of death. The world lies behind me--a
many-colored picture which God has bestrewed with crumbs of white
bread, where each one snatches up and devours and yet does not satisfy
his appetite. Only in intoxication can a child of fortune know how the
flowers beneath bloom and wither. I have been able to, and my soul with
every new work drank to satiety. What matters it if life has deceived
me? I asked nothing of it--that was my strength. You see I am
pronouncing my obituary. Yet I depart gladly.... Already the new host
approaches and swarms for me in forests and on plains: What matters it
that this hand was mortal; for the portraying is as eternal as the
image.
The Marshal.
You are mistaken. Only the deed is eternal. If with bloody sword it did
not teach mankind to remember, I should perish like a seed sown by the
wind.
The Painter.
It is you who are mistaken, sir. Not your deed has life. It soon
follows you into the grave. The portrait of the dead which we give to
posterity, in song and form, in parchment and stone, this it is which
belongs to immortality. By this you shall be hereafter loved and
hated.--So even if Achilles destroys the whole world, he has but to let
Homer live.
The Marshal.
And so I, you? Yet no song tells us that Homer ever kneeled before
Helen.
The Painter.
Not that. But every child knows why: the poor singer was blind.
The Marshal.
Your brush, alas, will not help you at all. Yet I should be well
disposed toward you. For he who in death seems to remain a trifler, has
taken life in earnest.
The Painter.
That is true.
The Marshal.