When You Enter The Palace,
As You Do In Response To A Custodian Who Soon Comes With A Key And
Asks
if you would like to see it, you find yourself, one flight up, in a long
glazed gallery, fronting
On the garden, which is so warm with the sun
that you wish to spend the rest of your stay in Genoa there. It is
frescoed round with classically imagined portraits of the different
Dorias, and above all the portrait of that great hero of the republic. I
do not know that this portrait particularly impresses you; if you have
been here before you will be reserving yourself for the portrait which
the custodian will lead you to see in the ultimate chamber of the rather
rude old palace, where it is like a living presence.
It is the picture of a very old man in a flat cap, sitting sunken
forward in his deep chair, with his thin, long hands folded one on the
other, and looking wearily at you out of his faded eyes, in which dwell
the memories of action in every sort and counsel in every kind. Victor
in battles by land and sea, statesman and leader and sage, he looks it
all in that wonderful effigy, which shuns no effect of his more than
ninety years, but confesses his great age as a part of his greatness
with a pathetic reality. The white beard, with "each particular hair"
defined, falling almost to the pale, lean hands, is an essential part of
the presentment, which is full of such scrupulous detail as the eye
would unconsciously take note of in confronting the man himself and
afterward supply in the remembrance of the whole.
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