He is not really an aesthete at all; he is too Voltairian for that.
Indeed, if he had agreed with the aesthete, he would possibly not have introduced him.
But it wasn't a scientist's curiosity; it was an aesthete's.
As a matter of fact, there was much more of the aesthete in him than of the Nonconformist.
And this is the condition of the decadent, of the aesthete, of the free-lover.
You know what he says—'The aesthete is, after all, only a dallier.
This, for that ruthless egotist, the aesthete, is the substance of all things theatrical.
The aesthete must not ask me to mingle my tears with his, because these things are merely useful and ugly.
Aesthete and libertine alike sink to the lower level of pleasure, and their emotions become obscene.
That aesthete, to be sure, was right, when he said: "It is Style that makes one believe in a thing; nothing but Style."
