“It is a strange thing,” he said, “that mankind are so gross as to confuse the sense of taste with greediness. No, my dear boy, I am not at this moment attacking you. But there is no organ, even that of the ear, in this wonderful body of ours so fine as that of taste. Yet to most people the sight of a man deeply appreciating his dinner conveys a feeling of greediness. But I always respect such a man. He has a sense more than most people.” “But isn’t it greedy?” asked Martin. Karl became deeply impressive. “It is no more greedy,” he said, “to catch the flavour of an olive or an oyster than to catch the tone of a ’cello.” “Ah, that would be like encoring a song in an opera--a most detestable habit--and hearing it over and over again. No artist desires that. Fancy hearing Wotan’s Abschied twice. That would be greedy. The art of dining, like most arts, is frightfully neglected in England.” Martin laughed. “I have been here, I suppose, a dozen times,” he said, “and every time you give me some surprise. I had no idea you gave two thoughts as to what you ate.” “That was hasty of you. True, of all the senses, I put the ear first. That is personal predilection. But all the senses really are equal; there is no shadow of reason for supposing that one is more elevated than another. True, some can be more easily misused than others, taste more particularly. But all are subtle gateways to the soul.” They had finished dinner and Karl pushed back his chair. “Take an instance,” he said. “Take incense. Does not that smell excite and inspire the devotional sense? Does not the smell of frangipanni--an unendurable odour--suggest a sort of hot-house sensualism? Does not the smell of a frosty November morning bring the sense of cleanness into the very marrow of your bones?” Martin sniffed experimentally. “Ah, I know that,” he said. “And the leaves on the beech-trees are red, and the grass underfoot a little crisp with frost. Oh, how good! But what then?” Karl was watching him closely. It was his conscious object now and always to make Martin think, to excite anything in him that could touch his sense for beauty. He had found that this half-serious, half-flippant method was the easiest means of approach,--for Martin was but a boy. Discussions in an earnest, conscious German spirit both bored and alarmed him. This fact, had his father grasped it, might in years past have helped matters. “Why, everything,” he replied. “Each sense can be expressed in terms of another. Take magenta in colour,--it is frangipanni in smell; in sound it is--what shall we say?--an Anglican chant of some sort; in taste it is the vague brown sauce in which a bad cook hides his horrors.” Martin laughed again, with the keen pleasure of youth in all things experimental. “Yes, that is true,” he said. “How do you go on? Take a fine colour,--vermilion.”