"_Pas davantage_--for the artist himself: how can you ask? I don't know what is meant by French art and English art and American art: those seem to me mere cataloguers' and reviewers' and tradesmen's names, representing preoccupations utterly foreign to the artist. Art is art in every country, and the novel (since Bonus mentions that) is the novel in every tongue, and hard enough work they have to live up to that privilege, without our adding another muddle to the problem. The reader, the consumer may call things as he likes, but we leave him to his little amusements." I suggested that we were all readers and consumers; which only made Vendemer continue: "Yes, and only a small handful of us have the ghost of a palate. But you and I and Bonus are of the handful." "What do you mean by the handful?" Bonus inquired. Vendemer hesitated a moment. "I mean the few intelligent people, and even the few people who are not----" He paused again an instant, long enough for me to request him not to say what they were "not," and then went on: "People in a word who have the honour to live in the only country worth living in." "And pray what country is that?" "The land of dreams--the country of art." "Oh, the land of dreams! I live in the land of realities!" Bonus exclaimed. "What do you all mean then by chattering so about _le roman russe?_" "It's a convenience--to identify the work of three or four, _là-bas_, because we're so far from it. But do you see them _writing_ 'le roman russe?'" "I happen to know that that's exactly what they want to do, some of them," said Bonus. "Some of the idiots, then! There are plenty of those everywhere. Anything born under that silly star is sure not to count." "Thank God I'm not an artist!" said Bonus. "Dear Alfred's a critic," I explained. "And I'm not ashamed of my country," he subjoined. "Even a critic perhaps may be an artist," Vendemer mused. "Then as the great American critic Bonus may be the great American artist," I went on. "Is that what you're supposed to give us--'American' criticism?" Vendemer asked, with dismay in his expressive, ironic face. "Take care, take care, or it will be more American than critical, and then where will _you_ be? However," he continued, laughing and with a change of tone, "I may see the matter in too lurid a light, for I've just been favoured with a judgment conceived in the purest spirit of our own national genius." He looked at me a moment and then he remarked: "That dear Madame de Brindes doesn't approve of my attitude." "Your attitude?" "Toward your German friend. She let me know it when I went down stairs with her--told me I was much too cordial, that I must observe myself." "And what did you reply to that?" "I answered that the things he had played were extraordinarily beautiful." "And how did she meet that?" "By saying that he's an enemy of our country." "She had you there," I rejoined. "Yes, I could only reply '_Chère madame, voyons!_'" "That was meagre."