Having delivered myself of the foregoing, I went into the lanai (interior courtyard) of the library to sit and listen to the new arrivals of baroque musique and to read criticism and commentaries on Mark Twain, E. Dickinson, and E.A. Poe--and was scarce adjusted in the tomb, when Douglas joined me, whom I could scarcely forbear to talk to, and then John, who rose to the bait, of my saying that I only truly, of all Debussy's works, love the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, "because it is diatonic," like a Pisces rocketfish: "You mean you make the whole world revolve around--not just you, but around--your [parochial] likes and dislikes!" "Well, yes," I said maddeningly, "--But look [I showed him the menu on the back of my latest CD, with the names of Alessandro Scarlatti, Locatelli, Geminani, Vivaldi, Albinoni]: Every single one of these works is a masterpiece. I haven't heard them all, and I know that. And I know, even without hearing them, that every single one of these composers has his own distinctive, individual voice. And the music they all have written, you'll notice, is diatonic. And at the same time that this music was being written, the greatest violins ever made [the Guernariuses and the Stradivariuses the like of which the world has never seen since] were being made to play them on. How do you suppose that all this wonderful music and all these wonderful musical instruments happen to have been made at the same time?"