Pagina 472 di 490

It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to

whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much

younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed

to them her latest wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict

the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on

something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the

opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed

in everything, and knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing

you are playing is! I wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca,

with the sea weeping round the villa and the salt spray dashing

against the panes? It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing

it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative!

Don't stop. I want music to-night. It seems to me that you are

the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you. I have

sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of.