time before us.

The art academy did not open before three o'clock.

Gibran said in Arabic:

— Go with him alone, Youssef. I shall wait for you here. I shall browse and look about until you come back.

I passed with Calmi along the road that divides the Montparnasse cemetery in two; we walked among the sumptuous tombs and stopped before the tomb of the poet "Baudelaire," contemplating his statue lying on its back, the color of the stone beginning to fade from rain and sun across years and years!

And Calmi recited: "When you lie sleeping, my sullen beauty, in the depths of a tomb built of black marble.." Then he contin-ued, without finishing the verses: "This is no time for poetry..."

We turned north into the rue Froidevaux, and I opened the door of my place, which looks onto the street.

Calmi stepped forward, saying: —

— This is a studio for sculpture rather than for painting...

Then he ran his eye about the place, pausing a moment before each picture — most of them unfinished... among them the picture of a seated woman with seven spears thrust into her breast. I noticed that he turned down his lower lip, a sign of disdain, and I felt the cold sweat bedew my brow...

— What might this pic-ture represent?

I answered him, feigning calm: —

— A picture of the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Seven Sorrows. Sister Thérèse, one of the Sisters of Charity, ordered it of me... I have sisters who are nuns...

Calmi looked into my eyes with

a sharp look that disturbed me, then pointed to the picture of a man kneeling in devout prayer... and turned down his lip again and asked me: —

— And this picture?

— ... Christ in the Garden of Olives..

— And that one, too, is for the Sisters of Charity?! This, my friend, takes us very far from the practical question... If all you seek is the salvation of your soul, and the good graces of the nuns matter to you, that is your own affair and none of mine. But if you want to earn money, this is not the road, believe me! Nor is this the kind! Take my advice: try Cubism, and I will undertake to sell your pictures if you succeed. It is a matter of arithmetic, 1 + 1 = 2: ten percent of the sale price for me...

I told Gibran of all this, and said that I had taken Calmi's words seriously and that I meant to try...

— That road is rough and thorny, Youssef... How many times have I told you that art is neither a plaything nor a trade... It is a means of expressing feeling... it is a divine breath.. it is.. I can find no word to express what I mean..."

And as though, after this utter soaring of feeling, he came back down to earth, he finished his talk: — My opinion is that you should train yourself in sculpture.. in the Arab East there is no sculptor... you will be the first sculptor.. and if you wish to go with me to the United States, there the field is wide...

Neither Gibran nor I knew at that time what the tragedy of the fine arts meant in the Eastern climate, before the Great War... and after it.