vain did he fight against it: his intellectual pride, his complacent
conception of a purely esthetic world, made for the joy of the spirit,
would sink deep into the ground at the sight of injustice. Esthetic, a
world in which eight men out of ten live in nakedness and want, in
physical and moral wretchedness? Oh! come! A man must be an impudent
creature of privilege who would dare to claim as much. An artist like
Christophe, in his inmost conscience, could not but be on the side of
the working-classes. What man more than the spiritual worker has to
suffer from the immorality of social conditions, from the scandalously
unequal partition of wealth among men? The artist dies of hunger or
becomes a millionaire for no other reason than the caprice of fashion
and of those who speculate on fashion. A society which suffers its best
men to die or gives them extravagant rewards is a monstrous society: it
must be swept and put in order. Every man, whether he works or no, has a
right to a living minimum.

Every kind of work, good or mediocre, should be rewarded, not according
to its real value--(who can be the infallible judge of that?)--but
according to the normal legitimate needs of the worker. Society can and
should assure the artist, the scientist, and the inventor an income
sufficient to guarantee that they have the means and the time yet
further to grace and honor it. Nothing more. The _Gioconda_ is not
worth a million. There is no relation between a sum of money and a work
of art: a work of art is neither above nor below money: it is outside
it. It is not a question of payment: it is a question of allowing the
artist to live. Give him enough to feed him, and allow him to work in
peace. It is absurd and horrible to try to make him a robber of
another's property. This thing must be put bluntly: every man who has
more than is necessary for his livelihood and that of his family, and
for the normal development of his intelligence, is a thief and a robber.