After all the gaudy brilliancy of the feast-day, after all the hot unrest of the streets and the stifling atmosphere of the churches, it was pleasant to stroll toward the gray walls of the town in the late afternoon. The bells were calling from tower to tower. Along the grass-grown streets no footfall save our own broke the stillness. Here and there a goddess or a couple of cherubs bearing an escutcheon smirked at us from the high garden-walls. Sometimes from within the wrought-iron gates came the rustling of trees or the plash of a fountain. We paused at a wide weatherbeaten door, rang the bell and were admitted by a brown smiling contadina, who preceded us up the narrow path that had vines stretching out on either side, with flowering peas and beans climbing, all crimson and scarlet blossom, over the jagged stakes. The air was rilled with perfume and the eager buzzing of bees. At the end of the path stood a large square house, on the portico of which sat two blue-frocked peasants smoking and drinking red wine. There was a broad patch of green sward in front, on which three yellow-haired children and a small tawny dog were rolling in play. Under the great fig tree at the side of the house sat three brown-faced women, two knitting, the third dressing her hair. There were cool shadows under the broad leaves of the fig tree, and bars of slanting sunlight falling through the foliage on to the grass. At the right of the house stood a little Gothic chapel with the sunlight streaming across the threshold. On the arch of the door the birds were singing, and there was a growth of purple cabbages and kingly artichokes by the side of the chapel, and low in the hollows near by lay patches of brake and fern.
At the sunlit threshold a woman sat sewing. Before her was a table with photographs, and a stalk of lilies in a blue earthern pitcher upon it. The sun streamed over the sunken pavement to the neglected little altar with its coarse mosaics and paper flowers, over the rickety little pulpit and the traces of Byzantine gilding, and over the quaint old effigy of the founder. It fell, soft and brilliant and caressing, on the frescoes of Giotto. They were as pure and fresh and holy as the very lilies; and as the lilies revealed the innermost meanings of Sant' Antonio's Day to the hearts of the worshippers, so the frescoes symbolized the deepest reverence, the hidden longing of the whole brilliant, noisy Middle Age life of Padua. Their very crudeness, their nakedness, their barrenness of accessory, their sharp, brilliant coloring, cause them to stand out in strong relief. Never did the mystery of Holy Writ receive better interpretation than at the hands of Giotto. The characters in the sacred writings stand out sharp, bold, naked, crude, and Giotto caught the bare emotional and intellectual nature of every personage. He painted their souls and not their bodies, and therefore he painted well. Each character might stand for the personification of some one emotion. What can be more full of sweetness and humble adoration than the Annunciation! what more awe-inspiring, more faithful in its horror, than the miracle of Lazarus, where the corpse, swathed in its bandages, stands upright among the multitude with its hollow eyes gazing in mingled gratitude and terror at the Saviour! what more full of grotesque sternness than the Last Judgment! what more nobly imagined, more faithfully executed, than the Last Supper! The simplicity and sublimity of revelation shine down from them, and make the beholder speechless with the thought of divine love.
Let us go no farther. Let us end our holiday here. Under the altar sleeps the old knight who built the chapel, and outside the door the peasants sit upon the threshold of his palace. The butterflies saunter in on the sun-filled breeze and flutter about the lilies on the table and the painted lilies on the wall. The dark sweet faces shine down from the frescoes, as they have shone down upon the worshippers through the ages, with a blessing on their holy, sentient mouths. A deep reverent hush is in the air—a nameless expectancy fills our hearts. We stand on the threshold of all that is best and worthiest in the human life of centuries, with the shades of the great and noble pressing about us. The announcing angel has brought unto us the lilies of revelation, and we feel with glad humility that we are for ever one with all the high souls that have joined earth with heaven.
Charlotte Adams.
A LAW UNTO HERSELF.
CHAPTER VI.
A year after Laidley's death, Judge Rhodes, being in New York, breakfasted with Mr. Neckart. He noticed that the editor had grown lean and sallow. "And God knows he had no good looks to spare," smoothing down his own white beard over his comfortable paunch. Something, too, of that easy frankness which had made Neckart so popular was gone; no topic interested him; his eye was secretive and irritable; he spoke and moved under the constant pressure of self-control. The judge, as he watered his claret, eyed the dark face opposite to him critically. "Now, I never," he thought, "saw a sign of ill-temper or cruelty in that man. Yet I have a queer fancy that if the reins were once taken off he could not master himself again. It must be devilishly uncomfortable, holding one's self in in that way," the last morsel of quail sliding down his throat unctuously. "I can let myself out without danger."
"Why, you eat nothing! The campaign's been too much for you, Mr. Neckart," he said aloud. "You've run down terribly in the last year. Always the way. You young men make too many spurts in the first heat, and break down before the middle of the race. Well, that's our American policy. But the American physique won't stand it."