“You make it sound very plausible.”

“Oh, the cards can be very wise. Also very tricky. So you know who the Little Man is? And you won’t tell?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, be careful. Maybe the Fool is tied up with the Little Man I had that hunch about. Father Simon, have you ever looked hard at that card of the Fool?”

“I think I remember it pretty clearly.”

“What is the dog doing?”

“I don’t remember the dog.”

“Yerko, get the cards. And maybe just a thimbleful of your plum brandy.”

While Yerko was busy, Darcourt looked at the prostrate Doctor. Her colour was better, and so far as a woman of her distinguished demeanour could do so, she was snoring.

“Look now. There he is. The Fool. You see he is going on a journey and he looks very happy. He is always going someplace, is the Fool. And he has a good fool’s dress, but see, the pants are torn at the back. Part of his arse is showing. And that is very true, because when the Fool comes into our life, we always show our arses a little bit. And what does the little dog do with the bare arse? He is maybe nipping at it. What is the dog, anyway? He is a thing of nature, isn’t he? Not learning, or thinking, but nature in a simple form, and the little dog is nipping at the Fool’s arse to make him go in a path that the mind would not think of. A better path. A natural path that Fate chooses. Maybe a path the mind would not approve of, because the mind can be a fool too—but not the great, the very fine Fool that takes the special journey. The little dog is nipping, but maybe he is also sniffing. Because you cannot nip without you also sniff. You know how dogs sniff everybody? The crotch? The arse? They have to be trained not to do it, but they forget because they have the great gift of scent, which wise, thinking Man has almost murdered. The nose speaks when the eyes are blind. Man, when he thinks he is civilized, pretends he does not smell, and if he is afraid he stinks he puts on some stuff to kill his stink. But the little dog knows that the arse and the smell are part of the real life and part of the Fool’s journey, and the natural things cannot be got rid of if you want to live with the real world and not in the half-world of stupid, contented people. The Fool is going just as fast as he can to something he thinks good. What do people say when somebody goes as hard as he can for something?”

“They say he goes for it bald-headed.”

“People I know say he goes for it bare-arsed,” said Yerko.

“You see, Father Simon? Somebody in all this destiny that is told in that spread of cards is going bare-arsed for something very important. Is it you?”

“You have amazed me, Mamusia, and in my amazement I shall speak the truth. Yes, I think it is me.”

“Good. I thought you were the Hermit, but now I am sure you are the Fool. You are going far, and instinct is nipping at your arse, and you will have to understand that instinct knows you better than you know yourself. Instinct knows the smell of your arse—your backside that you can never see.—Listen, how much does my son-in-law pay you for what you do?”

“Pay me! Mamusia, I get some expenses now and again to put back in my own pocket what I have taken out of it to serve the Cornish Foundation, damn it, but not one red cent of pay have I ever had. I am always out of pocket. And I am getting sick of it. They think because I am a friend I love working my tail off for them, just to be one of the gang. And the trouble is they are right!”

“Father Simon, don’t shout! You are a very lucky man and now I know you are the Fool. The great Fool who dominates the whole spread! Don’t you take a penny! Not one penny! That is the Fool’s way, because his fortune is not made like other men’s. They pay everybody. This Powell, the baby-maker. This Doctor here, who is very good at her job, but is just La Force, you know, and sometimes puts her foot very wrong. And that girl, that child who is being given so much money for this opera job, and it may not be for her good. But you are free! You wear no golden chain! You are the Fool—Oh, I must kiss you!”

Which she did. And then Yerko insisted on kissing him too. A prickly, smelly embrace, but Darcourt recognized now that reality and truth can sometimes be very smelly. Thus the party broke up, and Darcourt took Gunilla home in a taxi, and delivered her, still limp and silent, into the hands of Schnak.

“Oh, Nilla, you poor darling! What have they been doing to you?” she said as she supported her wilted teacher.

“I have been a fool, Hulda,” said the Doctor, as the door closed.

Yes, but not the Fool! Exhilarated as he had not been in many years, Darcourt paid off the taxi and walked home, delighting in the chill air and his new character.

Searching for words to express this exultation, this state of unusual well-being, an Old Ontario phrase swam upward from the depths of his consciousness.

He felt as if he could cut a dead dog in two.

My heart goes out to Darcourt. The life of a librettist is the life of a dog. Worse than the playwright, who may have to satisfy monsters of egotism with new scenes, new jokes, chances to do what they have done successfully before; but the playwright can, to some degree, choose the form of his scenes and his speeches. The librettist must obey the tyrant composer, whose literary taste may be that of a peasant, and who thinks of nothing but his music.

Rightly so, of course. Opera is music, and all else must bow to that. But what sacrifices are demanded of the literary man!

Psychology, for instance. The watered-silk elegances of feeling and the double-dealing of even the most honest mind; the gushes of hot emotion that rush up from the depths and destroy the reason. Can music encompass all that? Yes, it can in a way, but never with the exactitude of true poetry. Music is too strongly the voice of emotion and it is not a good impersonator. Can it make a character have a voice that is wholly his own? It can try, but as a usual thing the voice is always that of the composer. If the composer is a very great man, like the divine Mozart or, God help us all, the heaven-storming Beethoven, we love the voice and would not change it for even the masterly characterizations of Shakespeare.

You see, my trouble is that I am torn between Hoffmann the poet and fabulist, and Hoffmann the composer. I could argue with equal conviction on either side. I want the poet to be supreme, and the musician to be his accompanist. But I also want the musician to pour out his inspiration, and the poet must carpenter something with the right vowel sounds that obediently partner the music without pushing itself into prominence. What great line of poetry can anybody quote from an opera libretto? Even Shakespeare is reduced to a hack, after the libretto hack has hacked his lines to suit Maestro Qualcuno’s demands. And then every simpleton says that Maestro Qualcuno has shown Shakespeare how it should be done.

If the musician is really sensitive to poetry, magic is the result, as in the songs of Schubert. But, alas, Schubert wrote truly terrible operas, and Weber had the fatal knack of choosing the worst possible people to write his libretti. Like that fellow Planché, who ruined Oberon. Oh, how lucky I am to have escaped the well-meaning drollery of Planché!

Now I have Darcourt, and what a task that poor wretch has been given! To prepare a libretto that will fit existing music, or rather the music that Schnak and the brilliant Doctor can make by enlarging on my notes.

He is doing well. Of course he has to find some words that will carry the plot they have created for my Arthur. It is not precisely the plot I would have wished for. It smells a little of the present day—their present day. But it is not bad. It is more psychological than I would have dared to make it, and I am happy with that, for I was rather a fine psychologist, in the manner of my time. My uncanny tales were not just fantasies to amuse young girls on an idle afternoon.