Intendant. Uguccio—15
Monsignor. ... 'guccio Stefani, man! of Ascoli,
Fermo and Fossombruno—what I do need instructing
about are these accounts of your administration of my
poor brother's affairs. Ugh! I shall never get through a
third part of your accounts; take some of these dainties20
before we attempt it, however. Are you bashful to that
degree? For me, a crust and water suffice.
Intendant. Do you choose this especial night to question
me?
Monsignor. This night, Ugo. You have managed my25
late brother's affairs since the death of our elder brother
—fourteen years and a month, all but three days. On
the Third of December, I find him—
Intendant. If you have so intimate an acquaintance
with your brother's affairs, you will be tender of turning30
so far back: they will hardly bear looking into, so far back.
Monsignor. Aye, aye, ugh, ugh—nothing but disappointments
here below! I remark a considerable payment
made to yourself on this Third of December. Talk
of disappointments! There was a young fellow here,35
Jules, a foreign sculptor I did my utmost to advance, that
the Church might be a gainer by us both; he was going
on hopefully enough, and of a sudden he notifies to me
some marvelous change that has happened in his notions
of Art. Here's his letter: "He never had a clearly conceived40
Ideal within his brain till today. Yet since his hand
could manage a chisel, he has practiced expressing other
men's Ideals; and, in the very perfection he has attained
to, he foresees an ultimate failure: his unconscious hand
will pursue its prescribed course of old years, and will reproduce45
with a fatal expertness the ancient types, let the
novel one appear never so palpably to his spirit. There
is but one method of escape: confiding the virgin type to
as chaste a hand, he will turn painter instead of sculptor,
and paint, not carve, its characteristics"—strike out, I50
dare say, a school like Correggio: how think you, Ugo?
Intendant. Is Correggio a painter?
Monsignor. Foolish Jules! and yet, after all, why
foolish? He may—probably will—fail egregiously; but
if there should arise a new painter, will it not be in some55
such way, by a poet now, or a musician (spirits who have
conceived and perfected an Ideal through some other
channel), transferring it to this, and escaping our conventional
roads by pure ignorance of them; eh, Ugo? If
you have no appetite, talk at least, Ugo!60
Intendant. Sir, I can submit no longer to this course
of yours. First, you select the group of which I formed
one—next you thin it gradually—always retaining me
with your smile—and so do you proceed till you have
fairly got me alone with you between four stone walls.65
And now then? Let this farce, this chatter, end now;
what is it you want with me?
Monsignor. Ugo!