(CONTINUED.)
Let me collect my scattered senses! Where am I? In Pitti Palace. On narrow staircase. Probably on forbidden ground. I hear footfall—descending. Perhaps it may be one of the officials, and I shall be caught in the act of attempting to enter the royal attics! What would be the punishment? Death, or penal servitude? The gallows or the galleys? Have happily several one-lira notes in my pocket. If these are not sufficient, five lire, or even ten—— But I shall see what sort of man he is. Perhaps a few coppers would be enough. At this moment the obstruction descends, and I discover that he is a fat German tourist. For the first time in my life am pleased to look at a German, though the cut of this one's clothes is even worse than usual. Feel inclined to fall upon his neck and murmur "Mahlzeit!" or "Prosit!" or some other idiotic exclamation peculiar to his country. Fortunately, remember that these are only said in connection with eating or drinking. Perhaps, if I were to remind him of drink, after he has spent hours in a dry, hot gallery, it would not tend to conciliate him. Therefore muster up the half-dozen words of his awful language which years of anxious study have enabled me to master in all their complexities of gender, number, case, declension, conjugation, agreement, government, &c.—not forgetting the exceptions—and, taking off my hat, ask him if this is the entrance to the galleries. "Ja wohl," says he. And moreover if I go up these stairs to the top. "Ja wohl," says he again. Emboldened by his courteous affability, I remark that the staircase is very narrow. "Ja wohl," says he, for the third time, and passes on. A very interesting conversation with an intelligent foreigner in a country where we are both strangers. There is nothing like travel to enlarge the mind. Besides, one learns so much of foreign languages when one hears the varied idioms and phrases of the natives.
Thus meditating I arrive at the top of the ladder. What a smell of paint! They are evidently doing up the palace. Turn along a passage about two feet wide—how that German got through it has puzzled me ever since—and find myself in a magnificent studio, filled with painters, easels, palettes and canvases, and with the smell of paint. That German deceived me. I have come to the wrong place after all. Am just about to apologise and retreat when I perceived a fine old master on the wall. Peeping amongst the painters, easels, palettes, and canvases, perceive other old masters, almost entirely hidden by the various erections of the students. At this moment an official rings a small bell. Ask him if I may be permitted to look at some of the pictures on the walls, if it would not be interfering with the painters. "Certainly, signore," says he. And ask him where the Pitti Gallery is. "It is here," says he. What? I have reached it at last! But how can one see anything when the whole place is choked up with these execrable modern copies and the apparatus to support them? However, I will see what I can now that I have got here. Happily the daylight will last for at least another hour. "But," continues the official, as I meditate, "it is now four o'clock. The gallery is closed."
"A FIRST IMPRESSIONIST.