“Why did you do it?” His own voice sounded weary to him; he must sleep.

“Sheer love of the art, of course, and then there’s the little matter of”—he rubbed two fingers briskly against the thumb—“filthy lucre. Our Zaubertheater has fallen on evil days. When you refused to do homage to the noble buttock”—he shrugged. “After all, I know them better than you do. But don’t look so downcast. The proceeds are what keep you afloat.”

“Not any more. I’m through.”

“I was afraid you might take it badly. That’s why, when you failed to recognize my work—and I did bring you there myself, pray remember—I hesitated to insist. Listen, don’t be a fool. Tainted money, eh? A bit too literary: Pip and Magwitch. Where else will you get a chance like this? I have news for you, my gifted but oh so innocent friend: automatons are dead. A handful care—they’re not enough. Oh, who knows, perhaps if we held on for twenty years, for thirty years…even so, you are about to become outmoded. L’image animée is the wave of the future: I’ve explained it to you before. My friend, you are a brilliant poet writing a late-nineteenth-century poem in Middle High German: three scholars, one with a hearing difficulty, one with an unfortunate tic douloureux, and one requiring a bedpan, compose your audience.”

“I express what I have to in a particular medium. What else is art? I don’t study fads and trends.”

“But I do, and I tell you, my friend: the day of the automaton is over.”

“As I conceive it, the day has never even begun. But this is a useless discussion.”

“And therefore quite artistic, at least according to one of the century’s more charming notions—though I’m afraid the boyfriend of Beatrice might have disagreed. Who cares where the money comes from? Turn the sow’s purse into a silk ear.”

“It’s not that, exactly. You should have told me. You’re playing some kind of game….”