...The next day, while we were waiting for the model, Gibran asked me:
— Out with your news! Where were you up carousing last night, while the storm was raging over Paris?
— I was burrowed in a warm corner of the Café du Dôme, with Kalmi, Dr. Kaspar, and some of the girls...
Gibran said:
— Speaking of Kalmi... he came to see me yesterday with a moving-picture director. It seems my stories did not meet with favor... I managed to gather from their hints that they are not fit for the screen... And in truth, Youssef, I am not satisfied with anything I have written so far... I have tried to express certain private feelings of mine, and people rarely care for such feelings — the more so as they have not yet risen to the level I want... I am certain that I have "something" to say to people; only its time has not yet come... What did Kalmi and the doctor tell you?
— Many things... among them a love affair that happened to Kalmi and made him believe that everything outside the circle of nature is artificial... And Dr. Kaspar went him one better in pessimism and said: "Life on earth is nothing but a bit of 'mold!'"
Gibran shook his head and remarked:
— All that may well be true, but it is cold and dark, and it chokes the heart... Life, Youssef, needs adornment and ornament and poetry and love... Were it not for these, man would weary of it and hate it, and prefer death to it...
I said to him:
— Can you guess what one of the girls asked me?? She asked me, in all seriousness, "whether God exists!"
Gibran laughed at the question, lit a cigarette and drew deep on its smoke, then blew it into the air before asking me:
— And what was your answer to this girl? You — your uncle is a Patriarch, and you understand theology!
And before giving me time to answer, Gibran went on talking, analyzing the origin of religious beliefs, enumerating the gods of the ancients, and telling how most people in this age have a single
God, and how some among them doubt even His existence!! At last Gibran said that he had it in mind to write a study on "Religion and Religiousness," and, after my habit, I advised him not to waste his time on theology — others before him had written massive volumes upon it and things had stayed as they were... And every man on earth is content with his creed, and with what he was taught of the nature of his religion from the morning his mother bore him!
And at Gibran's fervor I asked him, inquiring:
— And why all this desire to write?
He answered: "Perhaps it is an instinct in me, Youssef. I remember that when I first began to 'scrawl,' as children do — even at that early age I used to dream of selling my drawings and making a profit from them. And so it was whenever I read an entertaining story: a strong impulse would drive me to
— I am not satisfied with anything I have written so far!...