“Well? Your aunt must have been a wise woman. And Browning a deep psychologist. But don’t you see? It is the quality of truth, of depth of feeling, in your picture that has made all these learned gentlemen take notice.”

“But it’s a cheat!”

“I have carefully explained to you that it is no cheat. It is a revelation of several things about its subject and about you, but it is not a cheat.”

If Francis did not rejoice to have his private comment on the incalculability and frequent malignancy of fate acclaimed as a reminder of a long-dead dwarf, he could not help being warmed by the praise he was receiving as a painter, though unidentified. He thought he was being subtle in the way he afforded chances for Saraceni to comment on Drollig Hansel, its quality of workmanship, its evocation of a past time, its colour and the sense it gave of being a big picture when it was, by actual measurement, a small one. His subtlety did not deceive the Italian, who laughed at him as fishing for compliments.

“But I am happy to provide the compliments,” he said; “why are you not happy to ask for them like a real artist, instead of demurring and hemming like some little old maid who does a few water-colours other garden?”

“I don’t want to over-value the little thing.”

“Oh, I see; you don’t want to fall into the sin of pride? Well, don’t shrink from pride only to fall into hypocrisy. You’ve had a dog’s life, Corniche, brought up half Catholic and half Protestant, in a wretched hole where you got the worst of both those systems of double-dealing.”

“Easy, Meister! I have detected a good Catholic in you.”

“Perhaps, but when I am working as an artist I banish all that. Catholicism has begotten much great art; Protestantism none at all—not a single painting. But Catholicism has fostered art in the very teeth of Christianity. The Kingdom of Christ, if it ever comes, will contain no art; Christ never showed the least concern with it. His church has inspired much but not because of anything the Master said. Who then was the inspirer? The much-maligned Devil, one supposes. It is he who understands and ministers to man’s carnal and intellectual self, and art is carnal and intellectual.”

“You work under the wing of the Devil, do you?”

“I must, if I am to work at all. Christ would have had no time for a man like me. Have you noticed how, in the Gospels, He keeps so resolutely clear of anybody who might be suspected of having any brains? Good-hearted simpletons and women who were little better than slaves, those were His followers. No wonder Catholicism had to take a resolute stand in order to include people of intellect and artists; Protestantism has tried to reverse the process. Do you know what I should like, Corniche?”

“A new revelation?”

“Yes, that might come of it. I should like a conference to which Christ would bring all His saints, and the Devil would bring all his scholars and artists, and let them have it out.”

“Who would judge the result?”

“That’s the sticker. Not God, certainly, as the father of both leaders.”

Saraceni did praise Drollig Hansel, as both he and Francis now called the picture. He did more. Without declaring it to be so, he included Francis in a closer fellowship with himself, and as they worked he talked untiringly about what he believed to be the philosophy of art. It was a philosophy deformed by that disease so fatal to philosophers—personal experience.

The Countess also became more genial toward Francis. Not that she had ever treated him with anything but courtesy, but now she talked freely about what he and Saraceni were doing, and there were more of those conferences in her private room when Amalie and Miss Nibsmith had retired. The Countess wanted to improve the product she was exporting. If an original like Drollig Hansel was so well received, could not Saraceni bring about a greater change in some of the old pictures on which he was working?

“Surely you are not urging me toward fakery. Countess?”

“Certainly not. Just a little more boldness, Meister.”

In the course of these talks things leaked out that gave Francis a better idea of what was actually involved in what he could not help considering an elaborate fraud. The Countess and Saraceni were receiving, for the pictures they sent, a full quarter of whatever the dealers could get for the Italian pictures the German museums offered in exchange, and the prices made his eyes start in his head. Where was the money going? Not to Düsterstein; nothing so direct or so dangerous. To Swiss banks, and by no means all to one bank.

“A quarter is not too much,” said the Countess. “After all, that is what Bernard Berenson gets for a mere letter of authentication when he writes it for Duveen. We provide the actual works of art and all the authentication they need is the approval of the great German experts who buy them—who must be assumed to know what they are doing.”

“Sometimes I wonder if they don’t know more than they are telling,” said Saraceni.

“They are working under the gleaming eye of the Reichsmarschall,” said the Countess, “and he expects them to deliver the goods. And some of the goods—the choicest pieces—are said to find their way into the Reichsmarschall’s personal collection, which is large and fine.”

“The whole thing sounds crooked as a dog’s hind leg,” said Francis, falling into the idiom of Blairlogie.

“If that is so, which I do not admit, we are not the leaders in the deception,” said the Countess.

“You do not see it as dishonest?”

“If it were a simple matter of business, I would think so,” said the Countess, “but it is far from simple. I see it as a matter of natural justice. My family lost everything—well, not quite everything, but a very great deal—in the War, and lost it willingly for Germany. Since 1932 my Germany has been whittled away until I no longer know it, and my task in rebuilding my family’s fortunes has been made unbelievably hard. And why? Because I am the wrong kind of aristocrat, which is something much nearer to a democrat than National Socialism can endure. Do you know what an aristocrat is, Mr. Cornish?”

“I know the concept, certainly.”

“I know the reality. An aristocrat, when my family rose to prominence, was someone who gained power and wealth through ability, and that meant daring and taking chances, not steering a careful course through a labyrinth of rules that had been made for their own benefit by people without either daring or ability. You know my family’s motto? You have seen it often enough.”

“Du sollst sterben ehe ich sterbe,” said Francis.

“Yes, and what does it mean? It is not one of your nineteenth-century, bourgeois mottoes—a mealy-mouthed assertion of a tradesman’s idea of splendour. It means: ‘Thou shalt perish ere I perish.’ And I do not mean to perish. That is why I am doing what I am doing.”

“The Countess seems to have decided to march under the banner of the Devil,” said Francis to the Meister.

“We all meet the Devil in different forms, and the Countess is sure that she has found him in the Führer.”

“A dangerous conclusion for a German citizen.”

“The Countess would be surprised if you defined her as a citizen. She told you what she was: an aristocrat, a daring survivor. Certainly not a drivelling eccentric, as P. G. Wodehouse would have it.”

“But suppose Hitler is right? Suppose the Reich lasts for a thousand years?”

“As an Italian I am sceptical of claims to last for a thousand years according to any plan; Italy has lasted far longer chiefly by muddle and indirection, and how gloriously she has done it. Of course, we have our own buffoon at present, but Italy has seen many buffoons come and go.”

“I gather I am being invited to march under the Countess’s banner? The Devil’s banner.”