"Do you believe, Monsieur, as dear B. B., I mean Berenson, says in his Venetian Painters, that the origin of the portrait is to be found in 'the longing for the perpetuation of one's fame'?"
"No one comes to Venice for that, nowadays, Madam," I answered.
As the conversation gave signs of being redoubtable, I drew a rose out of my pocket; not a rose, but between two rose covers, like dry petals, forty-five pages of the most tender, the most secret, and the most gracious poetry, the new volume by Jean Cocteau, called Plain-Chant.
"J'ai peine a soutenir le poids d'or des musées
cet immense vaisseau . . ."
(impossible to find a quotation more pat)
". . . Combien me parle plus que leur bouches usées
l'oeuvre de Picasso."
My opponent was not to be put off by this.
"Your Picasso upsets me by his continual experiments. Tell me . . ."
Decidedly Fate was good to me. I drew out of my pocket an interview with Picasso which I had just received:
"I try to paint what I have found," said the Master of the rue la Boëtie, "not what I have sought. In art intentions count for little. There is a Spanish proverb that love proves itself by acts, not by reasons."
I put on the accent of Malaga as I read the last phrases, and pressed the lady's hand so significantly that I was permitted to finish my lunch in peace.
Our boat left Venice the same night. It was anchored two steps away from the Dogana, with its golden bull as weathercock. Eleven o'clock sounded; above St Giorgio Maggiore rose the moon, enveloped in German-style clouds playing The Tales of Hoffman. I couldn't see why we did not raise the anchor and was beginning to wonder whether the beautiful voyage which my hostess had promised me wasn't simply a motionless navigation opposite the Doge's Palace, when a strange cortège debouched from the entrance of the
