I had seen paintings in plenty and read descriptions galore of that last ride of the Widow Capet going to her death in the tumbril, with the priest at her side and her poor, fettered arms twisted behind her, and her white face bared to the jeers of the mob; but the physical presence of those precious useless baubles, which had cost so much and yet had bought so little for her, made more vivid to me than any picture or anystory the most sublime tragedy of The Terror—­the tragedy of those two bound hands.

Chapter XXI

Old Masters and Other Ruins

It is naturally a fine thing for one, and gratifying, to acquire a thorough art education.  Personally I do not in the least regret the time I gave and the study I devoted to acquiring mine.  I regard those two weeks as having been well spent.

I shall not do it soon again, however, for now I know all about art.  Let others who have not enjoyed my advantages take up this study.  Let others scour the art galleries of Europe seeking masterpieces.  All of them contain masterpieces and most of them need scouring.  As for me and mine, we shall go elsewhere.  I love my art, but I am not fanatical on the subject.  There is another side of my nature to which an appeal may be made.  I can take my Old Masters or I can leave them be.  That is the way I am organized—­I have self-control.

I shall not deny that the earlier stages of my art education were fraught with agreeable little surprises.  Not soon shall I forget the flush of satisfaction which ran through me on learning that this man Dore’s name was pronounced like the first two notes in the music scale, instead of like a Cape Cod fishing boat.  And lingering in my mind as a fragrant memory is the day when I first discovered that Spagnoletto was neither a musical instrument nor something to be served au gratin and eaten with a fork.  Such acquirements as these are very precious to me.

But for the time being I have had enough.  At this hour of writing I feel that I am stocked up with enough of Bouguereau’s sorrel ladies and Titian’s chestnut ones and Rubens’ bay ones and Velasquez’s pintos to last me, at a conservative estimate, for about seventy-five years.  I am too young as a theatergoer to recall much about Lydia Thompson’s Blondes, but I have seen sufficient of Botticelli’s to do me amply well for a spell.  I am still willing to walk a good distance to gaze on one of Rembrandt’s portraits of one of his kinfolks, though I must say he certainly did have a lot of mighty homely relatives; and any time there is a first-rate Millet or Corot or Meissonier in the neighborhood I wish somebody would drop me a line, giving the address.  As for pictures by Tintoretto, showing Venetian Doges hobnobbing informally with members of the Holy Family, and Raphael’s angels, and Michelangelo’s lost souls, and Guidos, and Murillos, I have had enough to do me for months and months and months.  Nor am I in the market for any of the dead fish of the Flemish school.  Judging by what I have observed, practically all the Flemish painters were devout churchmen and painted their pictures on Friday.