When we came out onto the rue d'Assas, my attention was caught, at the bend, by teeming beehives; I stopped Gibran a moment, and we fell to watching the busy bees going and coming, laden with the raw stuff of wax and honey, while the drones dawdled sluggishly at the entrance, hindering them from their work...
Gibran said jokingly: Do you see, Youssef, what heavy-blooded creatures these males are? No blame on the females if they desert them!
— That is a fine subject for a story, Gibran; treat it... and do not forget to explain how even the insects obey their instinct... how much more, then, man!...
Gibran remarked, laughing: — That too is from Voltaire! I see you quote his opinions constantly. Is there some kinship between you?
— A distant one, in any case... I like his light wit and the spirit of humor in his writings... and that "whetted" tongue from whose mischief no one was safe... as though he were possessed by devils!!... And the most important thing, Gibran, is that he shook the nerves of his countrymen and contemporaries, blew his trumpet among them and woke them to their bitter reality, pointing to the seats of the disease... Ah, how faded and barren appear in the mind the figures of the Eastern personalities contemporary with Voltaire... and even those who came after him!?: — Rows of empty talk... panegyric and versifying... and love poetry!?
A moment passed before Gibran spoke. He was sunk in his
Have these artists forgotten their mothers and their sisters and their sweethearts?
meditations, taking in what he had heard from me. At last he said: —
— The land of the East is untilled and barren... and the air is heavy
and stagnant... not to say "corrupt"... As for me, Youssef, my purpose is to shake the nerves of the Americans and to blow my trumpet in their midst... their country is fertile and the dollars are a sea, though their rich — like all the rich — are blind and selfish... God curse money, how it lies in ambush between a man and his desires...
With this last phrase Gibran would often end his talk with me, grumbling at his condition and his narrow horizon, longing to soar, to break free, and to pour out what battled in his breast and his mind... while on his wings there was as yet only the soft down that cannot carry the heavy body to
the heights..
xxxx
We turned into the rue Vavin, and there, between the Luxembourg garden and the Boulevard Montparnasse, stand some of the free art academies for painting and sculpture. In their midst in those days there was a small art bookshop, in whose window there was always a pleasant assortment of books and magazines and a few paintings of the "Cubist" kind. Before