“We must do everything we can to improve it...it can never be like Chambord ...help me give it a manorial feeling...walk about with me tomorrow...let’s write down some of your ideas...that stairway...the entry...we have to make it less grim...harmony...”
IL CAVELLO...the words haunted us as we said good night.
I lay down under my canopy. The bed seemed to grow immense. On one side I saw a child, a bend in a river, a hill...the bed drifted...the room changed... I saw men pouring bronze into a mould... I saw a great horse in a city square...
SALAI—He is either in studio rags or elegant, foppish; he bursts with energy (has a brisk, haughty walk); he is quick with his pigments; he is as lean-featured as a fox; he is yellow-headed, tall. He has a wonderful laugh, a tooth-spread grin. His brown eyes are spoked with yellow. A girl-chaser. My Salai will never become an accomplished artist. I still have to remind him to wash himself. Ai, Salaino! And will he ever quit that foreign habit, the habit of smoking?
Almost everywhere I travel I am troubled by poverty: I talk with the workers and some of them say they are hungry all of the time: I talk with them about their tools, and try to improve them. Shovels. Spades. Rakes. Forks. I have suggested a more efficient roasting spit—I have made detailed drawings. I have improved a wood-planer and a file-maker. I have designed a textile machine, a better barrow, a good water-lamp.
For most field laborers, theirs is an ox-life.
Horse, mule, donkey, ox, man...they are inextricable.
Landlord and tenant, the struggle goes on and on: they are as much at loggerheads as pope and duke. Serfs, beggars, greed, knights, fools—pathos.