He did not exactly suffer martyrdom - though probably he personally
did not notice any very great difference - and so he has not been
canonized; nevertheless, they have him there in that church. In
all Europe I only saw one sight to match him, and that was down
in the crypt under the Church of the Capuchins, in Rome, where the
dissected cadavers of four thousand dead - but not gone - monks are
worked up into decorations. There are altars made of their skulls,
and chandeliers made of their thigh bones; frescoes of their spines;
mosaics of their teeth and dried muscles; cozy corners of their
femurs and pelves and tibiae. There are two classes of travelers
I would strongly advise not to visit the crypt of the Capuchins'
Church - those who are just about to have dinner and want to have
it, and those who have just had dinner and want to keep on having
it.
At the royal palace in Vienna we saw the finest, largest, and
gaudiest collection of crown jewels extant. That guide of ours
seemed to think he had done his whole duty toward us and could
call it a day and knock off when he led us up to the jewel
collections, where each case was surrounded by pop-eyed American
tourists taking on flesh at the sight of all those sparklers and
figuring up the grand total of their valuation in dollars, on the
basis of so many hundreds of carats at so many hundred dollars a
carat, until reason tottered on her throne - and did not have so
very far to totter, either.
The display or all those gems, however, did not especially excite
me. There were too many of them and they were too large. A blue
Kimberley in a hotel clerk's shirtfront or a pigeonblood ruby on
a faro dealer's little finger might hold my attention and win my
admiration; but where jewels are piled up in heaps like anthracite
in a coal bin they thrill me no more than the anthracite would.
A quart measure of diamonds of the average size of a big hailstone
does not make me think of diamonds but of hailstones. I could
remain as calm in their presence as I should in the presence of a
quart of cracked ice; in fact, calmer than I should remain in the
presence of a quart of cracked ice in Italy, say, where there is
not that much ice, cracked or otherwise. In Italy a bucketful of
ice would be worth traveling miles to see. You could sell tickets
for it.
In one of the smaller rooms of the palace we came on a casket
containing a necklace of great smoldering rubies and a pair of
bracelets to match. They were as big as cranberries and as red
as blood - as red as arterial blood. And when, on consulting the
guidebook, we read the history of those rubies the sight of them
brought a picture to our minds, for they had been a part of the
wedding dowry of Marie Antoinette. Once on a time this necklace
had spanned the slender white throat that was later to be sheared
by the guillotine, and these bracelets had clasped the same white
wrists that were roped together with an ell of hangman's hemp on
the day the desolated queen rode, in her patched and shabby gown,
to the Place de la Revolution.
I had seen paintings in plenty and read descriptions galore of
that last ride of the Widow Capet going to her death in the tumbril,
with the priest at her side and her poor, fettered arms twisted
behind her, and her white face bared to the jeers of the mob; but
the physical presence of those precious useless baubles, which had
cost so much and yet had bought so little for her, made more vivid
to me than any picture or anystory the most sublime tragedy of The
Terror - the tragedy of those two bound hands.
Chapter XXI
Old Masters and Other Ruins
It is naturally a fine thing for one, and gratifying, to acquire
a thorough art education. Personally I do not in the least
regret the time I gave and the study I devoted to acquiring
mine. I regard those two weeks as having been well spent.
I shall not do it soon again, however, for now I know all about
art. Let others who have not enjoyed my advantages take up this
study. Let others scour the art galleries of Europe seeking
masterpieces. All of them contain masterpieces and most of them
need scouring. As for me and mine, we shall go elsewhere. I
love my art, but I am not fanatical on the subject. There is
another side of my nature to which an appeal may be made. I can
take my Old Masters or I can leave them be. That is the way I
am organized - I have self-control.
I shall not deny that the earlier stages of my art education
were fraught with agreeable little surprises. Not soon shall I
forget the flush of satisfaction which ran through me on learning
that this man Dore's name was pronounced like the first two notes
in the music scale, instead of like a Cape Cod fishing boat. And
lingering in my mind as a fragrant memory is the day when I first
discovered that Spagnoletto was neither a musical instrument nor
something to be served au gratin and eaten with a fork. Such
acquirements as these are very precious to me.
But for the time being I have had enough. At this hour of writing
I feel that I am stocked up with enough of Bouguereau's sorrel
ladies and Titian's chestnut ones and Rubens' bay ones and Velasquez's
pintos to last me, at a conservative estimate, for about seventy-five
years.
