"Look here," John protested. "I do not want to argue about either plays or novels to-night. But if you must talk about books, talk about your own, not mine. Beatrice wrote to me that you had something coming along about the French Symbolists. I shouldn't have thought that they would have appealed to you." "They don't. I hate them." "Well, why write a book about them? Their day has been over a long time." "To smash them. To prove that they were a pretentious set of epileptic humbugs." "Sort of Max Nordau business?" "Max Nordau! I hope you aren't going to compare me with that flat-footed bus-conductor. No, no, Johnnie, the rascals took themselves seriously and I'm going to smash them on their own estimate of their own importance. I'm going to prove that they were on the wrong track and led nowhere." "It's consoling to learn that even French literature can go off the lines sometimes." "Of course it can, because it runs on lines. English literature on the contrary never had any lines on which to run, though in the eighteenth century it followed a fairly decent coaching-road. Modern English literature, however, is like a rogue elephant trampling down the jungle that its predecessors made some attempt to cultivate." "I never knew that even moral elephants had taken up agriculture seriously." James blew all the ashes of his pipe over Beyle in a gust of contempt, and rose from his chair. "The smirk!" he cried. "The traditional British smirk! The gerumky-gerum horse-laugh! British humor! Ha-ha! Begotten by Punch out of Mrs. Grundy with the Spectator for godfather. '_Go to, you have made me mad._'" "It's a pity you can't tell me about your new book without flying into a rage," John said, mildly. "You haven't told me yet when it's to appear." "My fourteen readers aren't languishing. But to repay politeness by politeness, my book will come out in March." "I'm looking forward to it," John declared. "Have you got good terms from Worrall?" "As good terms as a consumptive bankrupt might expect from Shylock. What does the British public care for criticism? You should hear me reading the proofs to Beatrice. You should really have the pleasure of watching her face, and listening to her comments. Do you know why Beatrice goes to church? I'll tell you. She goes to indulge in a debauch of the accumulated yawns of the week." "Hush, here she is," John warned him. James laughed again. "Johnnie, you're _impayable_. Your sensitiveness to Beatrice betrays the fount of your success. You treat the British public with just the same gentlemanly gurgle. And above all you're a good salesman. That's where George failed when he tried whisky on commission." "I don't believe you're half the misanthropist you make yourself out."