"Oh, please, won't some one give me a roast-beef sandwich? In Russia I daren't eat meat on account of my disciples there and in England--" It is Tolstoy who speaks. Shaw fixes him with an indignant look, he, the prince of vegetarians: "Give him some salt, he needs salting." In tears, Tolstoy resumes his reading of the confessions of Huysmans. The band, on the other side of the curtain, swings into the Kaisermarch. "Stop them! Stop it!" screams Wagner. "I'm a Social-Democrat now. I wrote that march when I was a Monarchist." This was the chance for Nietzsche. Drawing up his tall, lanky figure, he began: "You mean, Herr Geyer--to give you your real name--you wrote it for money. You mean, Richard Geyer, that you cut your musical coat to suit your snobbish cloth. You mean, the Wagner you never were, that you wrote your various operas--which you call music-dramas--to flatter your various patrons. Parsifal for the decadent King Ludwig----" "Pardieu! this is too much." Manet's blond beard wagged with rage. "Have we assembled this night to fight over ancient treacheries, or are we met to do honour to the only man in England, and an Irishman at that, who, in his plays, has kept alive the ideas of Ibsen, Nietzsche, Wagner? As for me, I don't need such booming. I'm a modest man. I'm a painter." "Hein! You a painter!" Sitting alone, Gérôme discloses spiteful intonations in his voice. "Yes, a painter," hotly replies Manet. "And I'm in the Louvre, my Olympe--" "All the worse for the Louvre," sneers Gérôme. The two men would have been at each other's throats if some one from the Land of the Midnight Whiskers hadn't intervened. It was Henrik Ibsen. "Children," he remarks, in a strong Norwegian brogue, "please to remember my dignity if not your own. Long before Max Stirner--" Nietzsche interrupted: "There never was such a person." Ibsen calmly continued, "I wrote that 'my truth is the truth.' And when I see such so-called great men acting like children, I regret having left my cool tomb in Norway. But where are the English dramatists, our confrères? Ask the master of the revels." Ibsen sat down. Shaw pops in his head at a practicable door. "Who calls?" "We wish to know why our brethren, the English playwrights, are not bidden to meet us?" said Maeterlinck, after gravely bowing to Ibsen. Smiling beatifically, Saint Bernard replied: "Because there ain't no such thing as an English dramatist. The only English dramatist is Irish." He disappears. Ensues a lively argument. "He may be right," exclaims Maeterlinck, "yet I seem to have heard of Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, Barrie--well, I'll have to ask the trusty A. B. C. Z. Walkley." "And the Americans?" cries Ibsen, who is annoyed because Richard Strauss persists in asking for a symphonic scenario of Peer Gynt. "I'm sure," the composer complains, "Grieg will be forgotten if I write new incidental music for you." Ibsen looks at him sourly.