“Ah; that’s good, that’s good!” he said. “How I love smells--clean, sharp smells like this. But they’ve got to be wild; you can’t tame a smell and put it on your handkerchief; it takes the life out of it. Do you like smells, Comber?” “I--I really never thought about it,” said Michael. “Think now, then, and tell me,” said Falbe. “If you consider, you know such a lot about me, and, as a matter of fact, I know nothing whatever about you. I know you like music--I know you like blue trout, because you ate so many of them at lunch to-day. But what else do I know about you? I don’t even know what you thought of Parsifal. No, perhaps I’m wrong there, because the fact that you’ve never mentioned it probably shows that you couldn’t. The symptom of not understanding anything about Parsifal is to talk about it, and say what a tremendous impression it has made on you.” “Ah! you’ve guessed right there,” said Michael. “I couldn’t talk about it; there’s nothing to say about it, except that it is Parsifal.” “That’s true. It becomes part of you, and you can’t talk of it any more than you can talk about your elbows and your knees. It’s one of the things that makes you. . . .” He turned over on to his back, and laid his hands palm uppermost over his eyes. “That’s part of the glory of it all,” he said; “that art and its emotions become part of you like the food you eat and the wine you drink. Art is always making us; it enters into our character and destiny. As long as you go on growing you assimilate, and thank God one’s mind or soul, or whatever you like to call it, goes on growing for a long time. I suppose the moment comes to most people when they cease to grow, when they become fixed and hard; and that is what we mean by being old. But till then you weave your destiny, or, rather, people and beauty weave it for you, as you’ll see the Norns weaving, and yet you never know what you are making. You make what you are, and you never are because you are always becoming. You must excuse me; but Germans are always metaphysicians, and they can’t help it.” “Go on; be German,” said Michael.