"You venerable Struldbrug," giggled Swift. I was disagreeably impressed, yet held my ground: "You must have met him. He was a friend of Balzac--his music was then in vogue at Paris--" I stumbled in my speech. "He probably means that little Polish piano-player who dangled at the petticoats of George Sand," interpolated Swift. "I knew Cimarosa, Rossini I saw, but I never heard of Chopin. As for the Sand woman, that cow who chewed and rechewed her literary cud--don't mention her name to me, please. She is the village pump of fiction; water, wet water. Balzac was bad enough." My heart sank. Chopin not even remembered by a contemporary! This then is fame. But the immortality of Stendhal, of Swift--what of that? Its reality was patent to me. Perhaps Balzac, Sand, Flaubert were still alive. I propounded the question. Swift answered it. * * * * * "Yes, they are alive. My Struldbrugs are meant to symbolise the immortality of genius. Only stupid people die. Sand is a barmaid in London. Balzac is on the road selling knit-goods, and a mighty good drummer he is sure to be; but poor Flaubert has had hard luck. He was the reader to a publishing house, and forced to pass judgment on the novels of the day--favourable judgment, mind you, on the popular stuff. He nearly burst a blood-vessel when they gave him a Marie Corelli manuscript to correct--to correct the style, mind you, he, Flaubert! The gods are certainly capricious. Now the old chap--he has aged since 1880--is in New York reading proof at a daily newspaper office. He sits at the same desk with Ben de Casseres, and every time he mutters over the rhythm of a sentence Ben raps him on the knuckles, and says: "'You are an old-fashioned bourgeois, Pop Flaubert! Some night I'll take you over to Jack's and recite my Sermon on Suicide, to teach you what brilliance and Bovarysme really mean.'" I was shocked at this blasphemy, and said so. Stendhal calmly bade me to keep my temper. "But isn't Mr. Swift joking?"