Print collector's quarterly (6.1916)

his cheerful garden atelier, they watched the master at
work and listened while he told stories of Balzac, Dau-
mier, and others with whom he had been associated in
his earlier years or while, in pungent aphorisms that had
the epigrammatic concision and grace of the legends
which he traced beneath his pictures, he expressed his
philosophy of art and of life.
Once he dwelt upon his indifference towards the fait
accompli in art.
"I do a thing,” he said, "only because of its difficul-
ties, and because it is not easy to do. Take my garden
for example. When it is done, I shall gladly make a gift
of it to some one. There are those who paint landscapes.
I amuse myself by making landscapes in relief. Well,
what is it you want me to do with a design once it
is finished? There is nothing left to do but to give it
away.”
Again, speaking of the theatre, he asked: —
"Have you ever watched, not the stage, but the
theatre itself, during a performance? I do not know how,
after having seen that spectacle, one has the courage
to go on addressing the public. . . . Man at least makes
the acquaintance of a book in solitude. But a play is ap-
preciated by a raw mass of humanity, an agglomerated
stupidity.”
Then, leaving this subject, after a silence in which
he remained for a moment lost in his reflections, he
cried:—
"Ah! scientific research — that is a fine monomania
for you. Now, whether I make one lithograph more or
less does not count greatly for my renown. But, instead,
if there were a theorem which bore my name — hein,
that would be something like, would it not?”

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