“You are singular, Ladislaw. You look struck together. Do you know her?”
“I know that she is married to my cousin,” said Will Ladislaw, sauntering down the hall with a preoccupied air, while his German friend kept at his side and watched him eagerly.
“What! the Geistlicher? He looks more like an uncle—a more useful sort of relation.”
“He is not my uncle. I tell you he is my second cousin,” said Ladislaw, with some irritation.
“Schön, schön. Don’t be snappish. You are not angry with me for thinking Mrs. Second-Cousin the most perfect young Madonna I ever saw?”
“Angry? nonsense. I have only seen her once before, for a couple of minutes, when my cousin introduced her to me, just before I left England. They were not married then. I didn’t know they were coming to Rome.”
“But you will go to see them now—you will find out what they have for an address—since you know the name. Shall we go to the post? And you could speak about the portrait.”
“Confound you, Naumann! I don’t know what I shall do. I am not so brazen as you.”
“Bah! that is because you are dilettantish and amateurish. If you were an artist, you would think of Mistress Second-Cousin as antique form animated by Christian sentiment—a sort of Christian Antigone—sensuous force controlled by spiritual passion.”
“Yes, and that your painting her was the chief outcome of her existence—the divinity passing into higher completeness and all but exhausted in the act of covering your bit of canvas. I am amateurish if you like: I do not think that all the universe is straining towards the obscure significance of your pictures.”