THE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS.
No. IV.
SCENE—The Wiertz Museum at Brussels, a large and well-lighted gallery containing the works of the celebrated Belgian, which are reducing a limited number of spectators to the usual degree of stupefaction. Enter CULCHARD, who seats himself on a central ottoman.
Culchard (to himself). If PODBURY won't come down to breakfast at a decent hour, he can't complain if I—I wonder if he heard Miss TROTTER say she was thinking of coming here this morning. Somehow, I should like that girl to have a more correct comprehension of my character. I don't so much mind her thinking me fastidious and exclusive. I daresay I am—but I do object to being made out a hopeless melancholiac! (He looks round the walls.) So these are WIERTZ's masterpieces, eh? h'm. Strenuous, vigorous,—a trifle crude, perhaps. Didn't he refuse all offers for his pictures during his lifetime? Hardly think he could have been overwhelmed with applications for the one opposite. (He regards an enormous canvas, representing a brawny and gigantic Achilles perforating a brown Trojan with a small mast.) Not a dining-room picture. Still, I like his independence—work up rather well in a sonnet. Let me see. (He takes out note-book and scribbles.) "He scorned to ply his sombre brush for hire." Now if I read that to PODBURY, he'd pretend to think I was treating of a Shoe-black on strike! PODBURY is utterly deficient in reverence.
[Close by is a party of three Tourists—a Father and Mother, and a Daughter; who is reading to them aloud from the somewhat effusive Official Catalogue; the Education of all three appears to have been elementary.
The Daughter (spelling out the words laboriously). "I could not 'elp fancying this was the artist's por-portrait? portent? no, protest against des-des (recklessly) despoticism, and tyranny, but I see it is only—Por-Porliffymus fasting upon the companions of Ulyces."
Her Male Parent. Do it tell yer what that there big arm and leg be a' doin' of in the middle of 'em?
Daughter (stolidly). Don't you be in a nurry, Father (continuing) "in the midst of some colonial? That ain't it—colossial animiles fanatically—fan-tasty-cally—" why, this catalogue is 'alf foreign!