It was the same in the galleries devoted to painting. A Breton christening-party, depicted with the roughness that hides consummate mastery of technique, trudged along a snowy coast-road towards a little chapel near the seashore. The young mother in her winged starched cap and bodice of black velvet, yet pale from the ordeal of anguish, walked between her smiling gossips, carrying her new-born infant, chrysalis-like in its linen swaddlings, to be made into a good Christian by M. le Curé. And seated on a broken throne of red granite beneath the towering propylæum of a ruined Egyptian temple, whose colonnades of lotus columns, and walls painted with processions of hierophants offering incense to bird or beast-headed deities, and bewigged dancers and musicians ministering to the pleasures of long-eyed kings, receded down long perspectives into distance, a Woman, young and slender and draped in a long blue cloak over a white robe, gazed downwards at a naked Child sleeping upon her knees. And about the downy temples of the Child shone a slender ring of mystic brightness, and another, more faint, haloed the chastely beautiful head of the Mother bending above.
Another canvas, austere and gorgeous, with the marvellous blues and emeralds and rich deep crimsons of old Byzantine ornament in relief against a background of dull tawny gold, showed the same maternal figure, far older and in darker draperies, seated upon a chair of wrought ivory upon a daïs, looking outward and upward with deep eyes of unfathomable tenderness and sorrow, and pale hands lifted in supplication to that Heaven whither Her Son ascended after His Victory over Death. Across the knees of the Consolatrix Afflictorum a mourning mother lay prone and tearless. And at the feet of the Virgin, outstretched amidst the scattered petals of some fallen roses, you saw the nude, beautiful body of a male child of some three years old.
But little of the inner meaning of Bouguereau's great picture filtered through Franky's honest brown eyes to the mind that lay somewhere behind them. But he realised that for the grieving woman who had borne a son and lost him there was no more joy in the world.
The Child of that Woman upon whose knees she leaned her breaking heart had lived to attain to the perfect ripeness of glorious Manhood. But then.... Franky followed the lines of the dark, downward-drifting veil up to the rapt Mother-face with the sorrowful, close-folded mouth and the deep, fathomless eyes, and remembered what had happened to Her Son.
"Beg pardon!" he found himself muttering between his teeth. His hand went up, and he had bared his sleek brown head before he knew. This wasn't a Roman Catholic Church, anyway ... there was no obligation even to appear respectful; France had long ago kicked over the traces of Religion—all French people were Freethinkers in these days. Telling himself this, Franky did not replace the shiny topper. One rapid glance to right and left had shown him that the gallery was nearly empty; the few visitors it contained were too far distant to have observed the action. Except, possibly, one person, a lean, short, elderly man in shabby black, who stood some paces behind, a little to the left of Franky, holding a shovel-brimmed round-crowned beaver with both hands against his sunken chest as he gazed with bright, absorbed eyes at the wonderful rapt face of the Consoler; his lips moving rapidly as he whispered to himself, not breaking off or twitching a muscle because Franky had glanced round:
Franky glanced round again, and this time encountered the oddly young eyes of his neighbour, looking from a brown, deeply wrinkled visage framed in thickly growing, straight black hair, heavily streaked with white.
"Monsieur is a lover of Art?"
Undoubtedly a Frenchman, he addressed Franky in cultured English, with a tone and manner excellently graced. The vivid clearness of his amber-coloured eyes, set in the now smiling mask of walnut-brown wrinkles, was attractive. And Franky answered, unconsciously warming to the look and smile:
"Must say I hardly know. Things that clever, intellectual people go into raptures over, bore me simply stiff. Other things—things they howl down—go straight to the spot, you see. And all I can say when I'm hauled over the coals for liking rubbish is, that the rubbish is good enough for this child."
"I comprehend. Monsieur has the courage of his convictions. It is a quality rare in these days. And—this painting particularly appeals to Monsieur? May one be pardoned for asking why?"