You Will Try To Believe That You Have Thought About Them, And
You Should Not Too Strictly Inquire As To The Fact.
It is some such
forbearance that accounts for a good deal of the appreciation and even
the criticism of works of art.
IX
DRAMATIC INCIDENTS
If the joke of the door-keeper at the Farnesina was not so delicate in
any sense as some other jokes, it had, at least, the merit of being
voluntary. In fact, it is the only voluntary joke which I remember
hearing in the Tuscan tongue from the Roman mouth during a stay of three
months in the Eternal City. This was very disappointing, for I had
always thought of the Italians as gay and as liking to laugh and to make
laugh. In Venice, where I used to live, the gondoliers were full of
jokes, good, bad, and indifferent, and an infection of humor seemed to
spread from them to all the lower classes, who were as ready to joke as
the lower classes of Irish, and who otherwise often reminded one of
them. The joking hahit extended as far down as Florence, even as Siena,
and at Naples I had found cabmen who tempered their predacity with
_bonhomie._ But the Romans were preferably serious, at least with the
average American, though, if I had tried them in their English instead
of my Italian, it might have been different. At times I thought, they
felt the weight of being Romans, as it had descended to them from
antiquity, and that the strain of supporting it had sobered them.
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