and it had been going on for years. They went on producing and producing,
long after they had ceased to have anything to say, racking their brains to
find something new, something more sensational, more bizarre: for the
public was surfeited and sick of everything, and soon wearied of even the
most wanton imaginary pleasures: they had always to go one better--better
than the rest, better than their own best--and they squeezed out their very
life-blood, they squeezed out their guts: it was a pitiable sight, a
grotesque spectacle.

Christophe, who did not know the ins and outs of that melancholy traffic,
and if he had known them would not have been more indulgent; for in his
eyes nothing in the world could excuse an artist for selling his art for
thirty pieces of silver....

(Not even to assure the well-being of those whom he loves?

Not even then.

That is not human.

It is not a question of being human; it is a question of being a man....
Human!... May God have mercy on your white-livered humanitarianism, it is
so bloodless!... No man loves twenty things at once, no man can serve many
gods!...)

... Christophe, who, in his hard-working life, had hardly yet seen beyond
the limits of his little German town, could have no idea that this artistic
degradation, which showed so rawly in Paris, was common to nearly all the
great towns: and the hereditary prejudices of chaste Germany against Latin
immorality awoke in him once more. And yet Sylvain Kohn might easily have