She
must have been blonde, surely, and with narrow flanks.... There are
moments when one does not think of girls, are there not, dear reader?
And I swear to you that such a moment came to me while Dolmetsch
mumbled the last two bars of that Mass. The notes were "do, la, sol,
do, fa, do, sol, la," and as he mumbled them I sat upright and stared
into space, for it had become suddenly plain to me why when people
talked of Tintoretto I always found myself thinking of Turgeneff.
I do not say that this story that I have told to you is a very good
story, and I am afraid that I have not well told it. Some day, when
I have time, I should like to re-write it. But meantime I let it
stand, because without it you could not receive what is upmost in my
thoughts, and which I wish you to share with me. Without it, what I
am yearning to say might seem to you a hard saying; but now you will
understand me.
There never was a writer except Dickens. Perhaps you have never heard
say of him? No matter, till a few days past he was only a name to me.
I remember that when I was a young man in Paris, I read a praise of
him in some journal; but in those days I was kneeling at other altars,
I was scrubbing other doorsteps.... So has it been ever since; always
a false god, always the wrong doorstep.
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