"What?" interrupted Madame de Carlsberg. "The Venus de' Medici is at the Tribune and the Apollo and the Ariadne at the Vatican!"
"The Venus de' Medici!" cried Fregoso, angrily, "don't speak to me about the Venus de' Medici!—Look," he went on, pointing to one of the statues with his gouty fingers, "do you recognize it? That is your Venus!—It has the same slender, affected body, the same pose of the arms, the same little cupid at her feet, astride a playful dolphin, and, like the other, it is a base copy made from Praxiteles's masterpiece in the taste of the Roman epoch which brought it into existence.—Would you have in your house one of those reproductions of 'Night' which encumber the shops of the Tuscan statuary dealers?'—Copies, I tell you; they are all copies, and made in such a way!—That is the sort of art you admire in Florence, Rome, Naples.—All those emperors and Roman patricians who stocked their villas with the reproductions of Greek chefs d'œuvre were barbarians, and they have left to us the shadow of a shadow, a parody of the real Greece, the true, the original, the Greece that Pausanias visited!—Why, that Venus is a pretty woman bathing, who takes flight to arouse desire! She is a coquette, she is lascivious!—What has she in common with the Anadyomene, with the Aphrodite who was the incarnation of all the world's passionate energies, and whose temple was forbidden to men, with the goddess that was also called the Apostrophia, the Preserver?—Think of asking this one to resist desire, to tear Love from the dominion of the senses!—And look at this Dromio of your Apollo.—Does it not resemble in a confusing way the Belvedere that Winckelmann admired so much?—It is another Roman copy of a statue by Scopas. But what connection is there between this academic gladiator and the terrible god of the Iliad, such as he is still figured on the pediment at Olympia?—The original was the personification of terrible, mutilating, tragical light. You feel the influence of the East and of Egypt, the irresistible power of the Sun, the torrid breath of the desert.—But here?—It is simply a handsome young man destined to lighten the time of a depraved woman in a secluded chamber, a venereo, such as you can find by the hundred in the houses at Pompeii.—There is not an original touch about these statues; nothing that reveals the hand of the artist, that discloses the eye guiding the hand, the soul guiding the eye, and guiding the soul, the city, the race, all those virtues that make Art a sacred, magisterial thing, that make it the divine blossom of human life!"
The old man spoke with singular exaltation of spirit. His faded visage was transfigured by a noble, intellectual passion. Suddenly the comical and familiar side of the man came uppermost again. His long lips protruded in a ludicrous pout and, threateningly shaking his knotted finger at one of the statues, a Diana with a quiver, whose countenance, white in some parts and yellow in others, disclosed the fact that it had been restored, he added:—
"And the hussies are not even intact!—They are only patched-up copies.—Just look at this one.—Ah, you baggage, you should not keep that nose if it were not too much trouble to knock it off!—Ah!" he continued, as a servant opened the double door at the end of the gallery, "a thoroughbred needs no spur—Don Fortunato is ready."
Approaching Andryana Bonnacorsi, he said:—
"Will Madame la marchesa do me the honor of accepting my arm to lead her to the altar? My age gives me the right to play the rôle of father. And if I cannot walk quickly enough you must excuse me; the weight of years is the heaviest man ever has to carry.—And don't be alarmed," added the good old man in a whisper, as he felt the arm of his companion tremble. "I have studied your Corancez very deeply for several days. He is an excellent and good fellow."
"Well," said Corancez to Madame de Carlsberg, offering her his arm, while Florence Marsh took Hautefeuille's, "are you still as sceptical as you were about chiromancy and the line of fate? Is it simply a chance that I should have the Baroness Ely leaning on my arm in my wedding procession? And is it merely hazard that has provided me with an original like our host to amuse you during the wearisome affair?"
"It is not wearisome," replied the Baroness, laughing. "All the same, you are lucky in marrying Andryana; she is looking so beautiful to-day, and she loves you so much!—As to the Prince, you are right; he is unique. It is pleasant to find such enthusiasm in a man of his age.—When Italians are taken up with an idea they are infatuated with it passionately, devotedly, as they are with a woman.—They have rebuilt their country with the help of that very quality."
During these few minutes Miss Marsh was talking to Hautefeuille.
"You cannot understand that feeling," she was saying, "for you belong to an old country. But I come from a town that is very little older than myself, and it is an ecstasy to visit a palace like this where everything is eloquent of a long past."