LITTLE Don Luis the Valencian took the pink from his mouth, when he met Villegas coming up the steps of the Prado Museum. “I was going away,” he said, “but I will turn back with you. Anything for an excuse not to go to work!”
“Work!” Villegas fairly snorted! “You call painting work, when it is the only thing you like to do? Caramba! There are some things in this world hard to understand!” Villegas was disappointed. He had waited an hour at the studio for Luz, who never came for her sitting; this was quite natural the day after the court ball.
The head porter met us at the door; any of the famous painters whose pictures hang in the room of the great portraits might have been glad to have him for a sitter. He was a handsome man of the grave Castilian type, with a big, square black beard and skin like alabaster. He wore a broadcloth overcoat down to his heels and a gold laced cap.
“These are my friends,” Villegas introduced us. “You will give them any help they may need.”
The porter bowed gravely and we all followed Villegas into the Museum. He had come to make his morning rounds, and little Don Luis offered to be our guide while he looked over his mail.
“I was too discouraged to paint to-day,” said Don Luis, “so I came for help to the great artists, whose work is here. They seem to hold out their hands to me, and say: ‘we have travelled the road you find so hard; we, too, have known discouragement and despair!’ I always go away from the Museum as from the company of my best friends, full of courage and hope.”
“The way I feel, after seeing a play of Shakespeare’s,” murmured Patsy. “Clever work discourages you; great work puts heart into you, makes you feel you can go home and do something as good, that you might even have done that.”
Villegas, who loves the pictures under his care as if they were his children, is not satisfied with the Prado, and is always hoping they may some day have a museum worthy of them.
“The three arts should be united, as they were in Greece,” he said. “Oh, for a building that should be as a perfect casket for the two jewels, painting and sculpture. Other museums may illustrate the history of art better than the Prado, none possesses more masterpieces of painting!”
“He has performed miracles since he became Director,” said Don Luis; “not only in the care and hanging of the pictures, but against the risk of fire. He has put in all the latest fire extinguishing apparatus. He is right, though, we must have a new building, and, it appears to me, he will get it for us!”