Page:By order of the Czar.djvu/141

BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 129 cigar. "But Art I fancy has its mirthful side, eh, Forsyth ? well let us say its rosy side, if mirthful is too flippant."

"Art is a cap and bells under a cassock," said Phil, addressing himself to the fire.

"And the city's a pleasant fellow, with a flower in his buttonhole and a swindling prospectus in his pocket," said Swynford with a hearty laugh.

"Swynford wouldn't like to hear anyone else attack the old lady of Threadneedle Street in that fashion," said Walter, addressing Philip; "but let us drop that venerable nonentity — she must be deaf with the recent financial booms — Venice is more in our way, is it not, Forsyth?"

"I daresay Mr. Swynford gets quite as much pleasure out of the city as we do this side Temple Bar, and I am quite sure he would find as much real enjoyment in Venice as we shall. Don't think, my dear Mr. Swynford, that I imagine my profession is a more noble one than yours. On reflection, and notwithstanding what I said a little while since, I am inclined to think trade, business, finance, have the best of it. I sometimes wonder if painting and acting and writing novels and plays, and indeed if all the other fields of art are not the mere play grounds of men who think they are tilling a splendid soil, and after all do not succeed in providing mankind with either food or raiment; they are not producers who keep the world going, they grow no corn, dig up no coal, make no iron, weave no cloth; they are after all nothing but —"

"Producers of the salt of life," said Walter. "It is the artists and craftsmen who make life worth living. What is the moneyed man's highest ambition? To surround himself first with their work and then with the artists themselves; which brings us back to the Venetian question. Those old fellows of the great Republic : they knew how to combine trade with art, how to glorify money, how to