_Second Scene._ On the stage of the theatre there are two long tables. The scene is set as if for a banquet. The curtain is down. Some men walk about conversing--some calmly, some feverishly. Several are sitting. The lighting is feeble. However, may be discerned familiar figures; Victor Hugo solemnly speaking to Charles Baudelaire--who shivers (un nouveau frisson); Flaubert in a corner roaring at Sainte-Beuve--the old row over Salammbô is on again. Richard Strauss is pulling at the velvet coat-tails of Richard Wagner, without attracting his attention. The Master, in company with nearly all the others, is staring at a large clock against the back drop. "Listen for the Parsifal chimes," he says, delight playing over his rugged features. "Ape of the ideal," booms a deep voice hard by. It is that of Nietzsche, whose moustaches droop in Polish cavalier style. "Batiushka! If those two Dutchmen quarrel over the virility of Parsifal I'm going away." The speaker is Tolstoy, attired in his newest Moujik costume, top-boots and all. In his left hand he holds a spade. "To table, gentlemen!" It is the jolly voice of the Irish Ibsen, G. B. S. Lights flare up. Without is heard the brumming of the audience, an orchestra softly plays motives from Pelléas et Mélisande. Wagner wipes his spectacles, and Maurice Maeterlinck crushes a block of Belgian oaths between his powerful teeth. But Debussy doesn't appear to notice either man. He languidly strikes his soup-spoon on a silver salt-cellar and immediately jots down musical notation. "The correspondences of nuances," he sings to his neighbour, who happens to be Whistler. "The correspondence of fudge," retorts James. "D'ye think I'm interested in wall-paper music? Oh, Lil'libulero!" All are now seated. With his accustomed lingual dexterity Mr. Shaw says grace, calling down a blessing upon the papier-mâché fowls and the pink stage-tea, from what he describes as a gaseous invertebrate god--he has read Haeckel--and winds up with a few brilliant heartless remarks: "I wish you gentlemen, ghosts, idols, gods, and demigods, alive or dead, to remember that you are assembled here this evening to honour me. Without me, and my books and plays, you would, all of you, be dead in earnest--dead literature as well as dead bones. As for the living, I'll have a shy at you some day. I'm not fond of Maeterlinck. ["Hear, hear!" comes from Debussy's mystic beard.] As for you, Maurice, I can beat you hands down at bettering Shakespeare, and, for Richard Strauss--well, I've never tried orchestration, but I'm sure I'd succeed as well as you----"