"The halls of the Crystal Palace are filled to overflowing, the French envoys are rudely bumped by the enormous boxes. At the exposition the paintings reach to the very cornices, and there is even talk of hanging some delayed canvases in the restaurant opposite, notably the Casseur de Pierres of Courbet. We must add, however, that Courbet has also sent here a magnificent landscape, in which the water is so natural and so deep that it makes one dream dreams. That, and the Fauconnier of Couture, are the pictures that we love best in the French salon, in spite of our lack of sympathy for the realistic school.
"The Germans, when they see Courbet's paintings, say, 'A painter as good as he is rough, he sees like a peasant and paints like a professor, which is saying a great deal,' they add laughing."
"Here I interpolate a sentence," said Villiers. "'It is late to speak of the exposition,' and then I go on to speak of it all the same:
"One must also mention some exquisite grisailles of Ramberg, the Saint Joseph of Gysis, portraits by Lenbach, landscapes by Zwangauer, the German Daubigny, some academic sepias of Kaulbach on subjects drawn from Wagner's operas, and The woman in the velvet Gown, of Herr Canon, a young Austrian painter of incomparable talent. It is thought that The Banquet of Phaton of Herr Anselm Feuerbach, will have the medal of honour. It is great work, truly, and since Peter Cornelius, nothing better has been done in Germany. So art is in a flourishing condition.
"I am going to slip a new sentence in there," said Villiers. "'Let us now leave the exposition, with its already old news, and take a promenade through the city.'"
And he continued his reading:—
"We love Munich, but not everyone is of our opinion. It is true that Munich is rather lacking in police officers, that Les Pompiers de Nanterre is not sung here, that we notice an absence of assaults, swindlings and murders that is truly desolating for the future of this capital. On the other hand, we have seen magnificent theatres where Goethe is played, we have visited museums which contain treasures of art and of genius, we have seen monuments in the purest Greek style, great gardens like the Bois de Boulogne, immense cafés where one is served by pretty girls whom no one dreams of chaffing beyond reason, except, perhaps, some passing wags who have only their trouble for their pains.
"We have climbed up inside 'The Bavaria,' the enormous bronze statue which towers above the city, and through the eyes of which six people are able to see before them the sweep of land extending to the mountains of the Tyrol. We have visited the hall of the portraits of beautiful women of the country, where one imagines oneself in a sort of Montyon Gallery of love, and where, if her nose be of an heroic cast, the daughter of a shoemaker may find herself side by side with the daughter of a princess. The king, Ludwig I., who lodged in his palace this ingenuous display of Germanic beauty, loved all pretty women; and the good Bavarians recount that at his death the following scene must have taken place at the gate of Heaven:
"Rap! Rap!"
"'Who is there?' asks St Peter.'