GERARDO. That's a view shared only by people like yourself to whose interest it is to make this view prevail generally. We artists are merely one of bourgeoisie's luxuries in paying for which they will outbid each other. If you were right, how would an opera like _Walkuere_ be possible which deals with things the exposure of which is absolutely abhorrent to the public. Yet when _I_ sing the part of Siegmund, the most solicitous mothers will not hesitate to bring in their thirteen or fourteen year old daughters. And indeed, as I am standing on the stage, I know for certain that not one person in the audience any longer pays the slightest attention to the action itself. If they did they would get up and out. That's what they actually did when the opera was still new. Now they have accustomed themselves to ignoring it. They notice it as little as they notice the air separating them from the stage. That, you see, is the meaning of what you call art! To this you have sacrificed fifty years of your life! Our real duty as artists is to produce ourselves to the paying public night after night under one pretense or another. Nor is its interest limited to such exhibitions; it fastens itself as tenaciously upon our private life. One belongs to the public with every breath one draws; and because we submit to this for money, people never know which they had better do most, idolize us or despise us. Go and find out how many went to the theatre yesterday to hear me sing and how many came to gape at me as they would gape at the emperor of China if he were to come to town tomorrow. Do you know what the public is after in its pursuit of art? To shout bravos, to throw flowers and wreaths upon the stage, to have something to talk about, to be seen by others, to say Ah and Oh, once in a while to take a hand in unhitching a performer's horses--these are the public's real wants, and I satisfy them. If they pay me half a million, I in return furnish a living to a legion of cabmen, writers, milliners, florists, tavernkeepers. The money is made to circulate. People's blood is made to circulate. Young girls become engaged, old maids get married, wives fall victims to their husbands' friends, and grandmothers get no end of topics for gossip. Accidents and crimes are made to happen. At the ticket office a child is trampled to death, a lady is robbed of her pocketbook, a gentleman in the audience becomes insane during a performance. That creates business for physicians, lawyers ... (he is seized by a fit of coughing.) And to think in this condition I am to sing Tristan tomorrow!--I am not telling you these things out of vanity but to cure you of your delusion. The standard by which to judge a man's importance in this world is the world itself and not some fixed conviction one may have acquired through years of brooding meditation. I did not put myself in the market either; they discovered me. There are no unappreciated, neglected geniuses. We are