This word made many of the hearers smile, for they had understood
nothing of the fine distinctions drawn by Andrea. Giardini, indeed,
convinced that the Count had been talking mere rhodomontade, nudged
him with a laugh in his sleeve, as at a good joke in which he
flattered himself that he was a partner.

"There is a great deal that strikes me as very true in all you have
said," Gambara went on; "but be careful. Your argument, while
reflecting on Italian sensuality, seems to me to lean towards German
idealism, which is no less fatal heresy. If men of imagination and
good sense, like you, desert one camp only to join the other; if they
cannot keep to the happy medium between two forms of extravagance, we
shall always be exposed to the satire of the sophists, who deny all
progress, who compare the genius of man to this tablecloth, which,
being too short to cover the whole of Signor Giardini's table, decks
one end at the expense of the other."

Giardini bounded in his seat as if he had been stung by a horse-fly,
but swift reflections restored him to his dignity as a host; he looked
up to heaven and again nudged the Count, who was beginning to think
the cook more crazy than Gambara.

This serious and pious way of speaking of art interested the Milanese
extremely. Seated between these two distracted brains, one so noble
and the other so common, and making game of each other to the great
entertainment of the crowd, there was a moment when the Count found
himself wavering between the sublime and its parody, the farcical
extremes of human life. Ignoring the chain of incredible events which
had brought them to this smoky den, he believed himself to be the