“Isn’t he a noble old trump?” That point had been settled by the young men any time these three years. And now Mr. J. J. remarked that when Clive had read his father’s letter once, then he read Ethel’s over again, and put it in his breast-pocket, and was very disturbed in mind that day, pishing and pshawing at the statue-gallery which they went to see at the Museo.
“After all,” says Clive, “what rubbish these second-rate statues are! what a great hulking abortion is this brute of a Farnese Hercules! There’s only one bit in the whole gallery that is worth a twopenny-piece.”
It was the beautiful fragment called Psyche. J. J. smiled as his comrade spoke in admiration of this statue—in the slim shape, in the delicate formation of the neck, in the haughty virginal expression, the Psyche is not unlike the Diana of the Louvre—and the Diana of the Louvre we have said was like a certain young lady.
“After all,” continues Clive, looking up at the great knotted legs of that clumsy caricatured porter which Glykon the Athenian sculptured in bad times of art surely,—“she could not write otherwise than she did—don’t you see? Her letter is quite kind and affectionate. You see she says she shall always hear of me with pleasure: hopes I’ll come back soon, and bring some good pictures with me, since pictures I will do. She thinks small beer of painters, J. J.—well, we don’t think small beer of ourselves, my noble friend. I—I suppose it must be over by this time, and I may write to her as the Countess of Kew.” The custode of the apartment had seen admiration and wonder expressed by hundreds of visitors to his marble Giant: but he had never known Hercules occasion emotion before, as in the case of the young stranger; who, after staring a while at the statue, dashed his hand across his forehead with a groan, and walked away from before the graven image of the huge Strongman, who had himself been made such a fool by women.
“My father wants me to go and see James and Madame de Florac,” says Clive, as they stride down the street to the Toledo.
J. J. puts his arm through his companion’s, which is deep the pocket of his velvet paletot. “You must not go home till you hear it is over, Clive,” whispers J. J.
“Of course not, old boy,” says the other, blowing tobacco out of his shaking head.
Not very long after their arrival, we may be sure they went to Pompeii, of which place, as this is not an Italian tour, but a history of Clive Newcome, Esquire, and his most respectable family, we shall offer to give no description. The young man had read Sir Bulwer Lytton’s delightful story, which has become the history of Pompeii, before they came thither, and Pliny’s description, apud the Guide-Book. Admiring the wonderful ingenuity with which the English writer had illustrated the place by his text, as if the houses were so many pictures to which he had appended a story, Clive, the wag, who was always indulging his vein for caricature, was proposing that that they should take the same place, names, people, and make a burlesque story: “What would be a better figure,” says he, “than Pliny’s mother, whom the historian describes as exceedingly corpulent, and walking away from the catastrophe with slaves holding cushions behind her, to shield her plump person from the cinders! Yes, old Mrs Pliny shall be my heroine!” says Clive. A picture of her on a dark grey paper and touched up with red at the extremities, exists in Clive’s album to the present day.
As they were laughing, rattling, wondering, mimicking, the cicerone attending them with his nasal twaddle, anon pausing and silent, yielding to the melancholy pity and wonder which the aspect of that strange and smiling place inspires,—behold they come upon another party of English, two young men accompanying a lady.
“What, Clive!” cries one.