The Painter. I, sir? The Marshal. So, draw! The Painter. No, that you will never live to see! The Marshal. Then why do you wear a sword? The Painter. Because I choose to. The Marshal. You are a coward. The Painter. (_Controlling himself, with a smiling bow_.) And you are a hero! (_In the meanwhile the door at the centre is opened_. The Marquises _put their heads in, listening_. The Painter _observes it and takes his sword from the table where he has just laid it_.) See! As the traveller uses the staff to defend himself against dogs, so I must wield it. Such people are to be found at all doors where small men work and lie in wait and play the parasite. (The Marquises _draw back. The door at the centre is suddenly closed_.) Yet ever to bare the sword against you, with whom, out of a timid trustfulness, a bond, a splendid bond of pride, entwined me; whom of all the incompletely great men, I admiringly called the only great man--if ever I were to be guilty of such ignominy, I should not find my small share of peace even in the shade of the most beautiful church-yard lindens. The Marshal. Are you still young? The Painter. I am not exactly old, yet my fortune has been so checkered and various that I joyfully had given seven every-day lives for _one_ surfeit of this. And in the end--however one may work and strive, it is man's destiny: he dies of Woman. Therefore, instead of passing away slowly by my own, I will quickly find my end by the wife of another. My chariot of victory stops indeed suddenly. I greet its well-appointed driver--and I greet my judge. Thrust on! The Marshal. I may be a judge, but I am not an executioner. So do me the favour---- 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.