sure, but we were desperate! At any rate, we discovered that one time, it was possible to make an enemy believe he was wrong, and that you, his enemy, were right, through a rather obscure verbal art called, I believe it was, propaganda?"

"Yes," said Angelo. "The province in Art of writers and orators. As a painter or sculptor will create illusion with paints or stone, just so did the writer create illusion with letters."

"So we came to understand," the leader said, trying a little note of sarcasm of his own. "Our present difficulty is this: we of course have no such peop—er, Artists—at our disposal. We of course tried our own hand at it but nobody ever seemed quite able to agree on just what it was we were trying to talk about, so—well—We have come to you. Will you do this for us? A few words, for the sake of humanity?"

Clever, thought Maler, at that. An intended appeal to the philosophical side of the artistic mind. Maybe the poor wretch really meant it, even if he wasn't aware that "humanity" meant both Sides.

"To answer you," Angelo was replying, "I'll of course have to summon our Master of Letters. It may not be easy to win his assent, I warn you. He can trace his own ancestry all the way back to newspaper reporters, advertising copywriters and trade-journal writers—and so has naturally inherited their bitterness toward all such prostitutions of the Art of Writing, and artistic integrity in general. And you will admit that hacking out propaganda to order is of course just that, to say nothing of the moral aspects involved! However—"

Magnanimously, Angelo lifted his right arm and beckoned, and a Student was at once at his side.

"Fetch Master Forsyth at once. And tell him I said to leave his new Quarto behind; this is urgent."

The young woman left, and they waited.

"A cigarette?" Angelo proffered the leader.

There was surprise on the man's face. "You mean you can make—"

"Just crude paper and tobacco grown in the soil," Angelo said apologetically. "Untouched by any rays but the sun's, I'm afraid, and our few medicine-men—we have all kinds of hobbies here of course—just won't comment. Here ... and a light...."

The leader had almost finished his cigarette when the Master of Letters arrived.

 Prev. P 9/11 next