Surely No Woman Ever Was Associated Senti-
Mentally With Three Figures More Diverse, - A Disqualified
Sovereign, An Italian Dramatist, And A Bad French
Painter.
The productions of M. Fabre, who followed
in the steps of David, bear the stamp of a cold me-
Diocrity; there is not much to be said even for the
portrait of the genial countess (her life has been written
by M. Saint-Rene-Taillandier, who depicts her as de-
lightful), which hangs in Florence, in the gallery of
the Uffizzi, and makes a pendant to a likeness of
Alfieri by the same author. Stendhal, in his "Me-
moires d'un Touriste," says that this work of art
represents her as a cook who has pretty hands. I am
delighted to have an opportunity of quoting Stendhal,
whose two volumes of the "Memoires d'un Touriste"
every traveller in France should carry in his port-
manteau. I have had this opportunity more than once,
for I have met him at Tours, at Nantes, at Bourges;
and everywhere he is suggestive. But he has the de-
fect that he is never pictorial, that he never by any
chance makes an image, and that his style is per-
versely colorless, for a man so fond of contemplation.
His taste is often singularly false; it is the taste of the
early years of the present century, the period that
produced clocks surmounted with sentimental "sub-
jects." Stendhal does not admire these clocks, but
he almost does. He admires Domenichino and Guer-
cino, and prizes the Bolognese school of painters be-
cause they "spoke to the soul." He is a votary of the
new classic, is fond of tall, squire, regular buildings,
and thinks Nantes, for instance, full of the "air noble."
It was a pleasure to me to reflect that five-and-forty
years ago he had alighted in that city, at the very inn
in which I spent a night, and which looks down on
the Place Graslin and the theatre. The hotel that was
the best in 1837 appears to be the best to-day. On
the subject of Touraine, Stendhal is extremely refresh-
ing; he finds the scenery meagre and much overrated,
and proclaims his opinion with perfect frankness. He
does, however, scant justice to the banks of the Loire;
his want of appreciation of the picturesque - want of
the sketcher's sense - causes him to miss half the
charm of a landscape which is nothing if not "quiet,"
as a painter would say, and of which the felicities
reveal themselves only to waiting eyes. He even
despises the Indre, the river of Madame Sand. The
"Memoires d'un Touriste" are written in the character
of a commercial traveller, and the author has nothing
to say about Chenonceaux or Chambord, or indeed
about any of the chateaux of that part of France; his
system being to talk only of the large towns, where he
may be supposed to find a market for his goods. It
was his ambition to pass for an ironmonger.
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