Olivier did not answer. He loved his mother tenderly and the mocking tone in which Robert alluded to her displeased him. Robert understood that he had gone too far. “So you appreciate my port,” he said by way of diversion. “Have another glass?” “No, no, thank you; but it’s excellent.” “Yes, I was struck by the ripeness and sureness of your judgment the other night. Do you mean to go in for criticism?” “No.” “Poetry?... I know you write poetry.” Olivier blushed again. “Yes, your brother has betrayed you. And no doubt you know other young men who would be ready to contribute. This review must become a rallying ground for the younger generation. That’s its _raison d’être_. I should like you to help me draw up a kind of prospectus, a manifesto, which would just give a sketch of the new tendencies without defining them too precisely. We’ll talk it over later on. We must make a choice of two or three telling epithets; they mustn’t be neologisms; no old words that are thoroughly hackneyed; we’ll fill them with a brand new meaning and make the public swallow them. After Flaubert there was ‘cadenced and rhythmic’; after Leconte de Lisle, ‘hieratic and definitive’.... Oh! what would you say to ‘vital,’ eh?... ‘Unconscious and vital’.... No?... ‘Elementary, unconscious and vital’?” “I think we might find something better still,” Olivier took courage to say, smiling, though without seeming to approve much. “Come, another glass of port....” “Not quite full, please.” “You see, the great weakness of the symbolist school is that it brought nothing but an æsthetic with it; all the other great schools brought with them, besides their new styles, a new ethic, new tables, a new way of looking at things, of understanding love, of behaving oneself in life. As for the symbolist, it’s perfectly simple; he didn’t behave himself at all in life; he didn’t attempt to understand it; he denied its existence; he turned his back on it. Absurd, don’t you think? They were a set of people without greed--without appetites even. Not like us ... eh?” Olivier had finished his second glass of port and his second cigarette. Reclining in his comfortable arm-chair, with his eyes half shut, he said nothing, but signified his assent by slightly nodding his head from time to time. At this moment a ring was heard, and almost immediately afterwards a servant entered with a card which he presented to Robert. Robert took the card, glanced at it and put it on his writing desk beside him. “Very well. Ask him to wait a moment.” The servant went out. “Look here, my dear boy, I like you very much and I think we shall get on very well together. But somebody has just come whom I absolutely must see and he wants to speak to me alone.” Olivier had risen. “I’ll show you out by the garden, if you’ll allow me.... Ah! whilst I think of it. Would you care to have my new book? I’ve got a copy here, on hand-made paper....”