wished to point to but one speck in the pool of filth, but understood the art of making such specks conspicuous by means of the tints he placed by their side in his immortal writings. Anyone now who thinks he can cast away as superfluous what has thus been placed alongside it, loses sight completely of the fact that then, in order to produce effects, one will have to go back to the School which from 1830 flourished so long in France, although to the credit of that country I must say that the authors who sinned most against good taste in this respect were more in vogue in other countries than in France herself. That School—I trust and believe it is now extinct—appreciated how easy it was to grope in pools of blood, and cast handfuls of it on the canvas, so that one might see the large blotches at a distance! And it is true, the coarse streaks of red and black are painted with less exertion than is required to pencil in the delicate touches in the cup of a lily. For that very reason this school mostly selected kings as heroes for its stories, and for preference those belonging to the time when the nations had not yet come of age. See, the sorrow of the king is translated on paper into the howl of the people . . . his wrath offers the author an opportunity to kill thousands in the field of battle . . . his mistakes give room for the painting of famine and pestilence . . . all this gives scope for the coarse brush! If you are not moved by the mute horror of a corpse I have just stretched out there, then there is room in my story for a victim that still gasps and shrieks! Have you not shed tears for that mother who vainly seeks her child? . . . well, I will show you another mother who sees her child quartered! Are your feelings not harrowed by the martyrdom of that man? . . . I will multiply the sensation a hundredfold by having ninety-nine other men tortured by the side of him! Are you so hardened as not to shudder at the sight of the soldier who, in the beleaguered fortress, from hunger devours his left arm? . . .
Epicure! I propose that you shall command: “Form a circle to the right and left! And let every man eat the left arm of the man on his right . . . quick march!”
