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But what was Goya saying? Malraux keeps lunging at the point. In general he argues that the master's art was anti-idealistic, un-Christian and interrogatory: "If Christ is not the very meaning of the world, then the body of an executed felon by the roadside is more significant than a crucifix . . . Christian art was an answer; his art is a question. The Mocking is a pathetic subject but not a ridiculous one because Jesus has chosen to be mocked. The garrotted victims of the Inquisition have not chosen the pointed cap that shakes in their agony; the laughter of soldiers before a tortured body is a question because the body did not choose to die." Goya, Malraux concludes, "was the most eager for the absolute and the most remote from it that art has ever known."