Volume VI Part 17 (2/2)
The Prince della Catolica, invited me to dinner with the Venetian areat nu e heard fro so to do I had not received any letters from Pauline of late, and had no idea as to what had becos with a Spanish lady, naave 'tertullas' or assemblies, frequented chiefly by fifth-rate literary men I also visited the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, a well-read and intelligent o Varnier, one of the gentles's house I paid a good nazia, but as I was never left alone with her these visits becaested a party of pleasure with her and her cousins, she replied that she would like it as much as I, but as it was Lent and near Holy Week, in which God died for our salvation, it was more fit to think of penance than pleasure After Easter, she said, we nazia was a perfect exaht after, the King and Court left Madrid for Aranjuez M de Mocenigo asked me to come and stay with hiined, I should have been only too glad to accept, but on the eve of s, I was suddenly seized with a fever, and was convulsed so violently that e hich it shi+vered to frags ordered the coachman to drive home, and I was put to bed In four hours I was seized with a sweating fit, which lasted for ten or twelve hours The bed and two h with my perspiration, which dripped on to the floor beneath
The fever abated in forty-eight hours, but left me in such a state of weakness that I was kept to o to Aranjuez till Holy Saturday The aht I arrived a srew as large as an egg, and I was unable to go to mass on Easter Day
In five days the excrescence becae melon, much to the a's surgeon, a Frenchman who declared he had never seen the like before I was not alarmed personally, for, as I suffered no pain and the luuessed it was only a collection of lymph, the remainder of the evil hueon the history of the fever and begged him to lance the abscess, which he did, and for four days the opening discharged an almost incredible amount of matter On the fifth day the wound was almost healed, but the exhaustion had left me so weak that I could not leave my bed
Such was s It is before ive below a true copy:
”Yesterday the rector of the parish in which I reside affixed to the church-door a list of those of his parishi+oners who are Atheists and have neglected their Easter duties Aures in full, and the aforesaid rector has reproacheda heretic I did not knohat answer to make, for I feel sure that you could have stopped in Madrid a day longer to discharge the duties of a Christian, even if it were only out of regard for , my master, the care I a molested, all er When you return to Madrid you o where you will, and my servants shall transport your effects to your new abode
”I am, etc, ”ANTONIO RAPHAEL MENGS”
I was so annoyed by this rude, brutal, and ungrateful letter, that if I had not been seven leagues fros should have suffered for his insolence I told the one, but he replied that he had orders to awaitit at his face, saying,--
”Go and tell your unworthy master what I did with his letter, and tell him that is the only answer that such a letter deserves”
The innocent avedressed myself and summoned a sedan-chair I went to church, and was confessed by a Grey Friar, and at six o'clock the nextI received the Sacraive ed to keep my bed since my arrival 'al sitio', and that in spite of one to church, and had confessed and coood Christian He also toldmy name to the door of the church
When I returned to the a him that the certificate enclosed would infor I expressed a hope that, being satisfied ofhis
To the painter I wrote that I felt that I had deserved the sha to his request to honour hiood Christian who had just received the Holy Coiven; but I bade him to take to heart the line, well known to all honest people, and doubtless unknown to him:
'Turpius ejicitur qua the letter I told the ambassador what had happened, to which he replied,--
”I as is only liked for his talents in painting; in everything else he is well known to be little better than a fool”
As a ratify his own vanity He knew that all the toas talking of my imprisonment and of the satisfaction the Count of Aranda had accorded me, and he wanted people to think that his influence had obtained the favour that had been shewn me Indeed, he had said in a moment of exaltation that I should have compelled the Alcade Messa to escort me not to my own house but to his, as it was in his house that I had been arrested
Mengs was an exceedingly ambitious and a very jealous n were excellent, but his invention was very weak, and invention is as necessary to a great painter as a great poet
I happened to say to him one day, ”Just as every poet should be a painter, so every painter should be a poet;” and he got quite angry, thinking that I was alluding to his weakness of ie
He was an ignorant man, and liked to pass for a scholar; he sacrificed to Bacchus and Coht sober; he was lustful, bad-tempered, envious, and miserly, but yet would be considered a virtuous man He loved hard work, and this forced him to abstain, as a rule, from dinner, as he drank so inordinately at thatafter it When he dined out he had to drink nothing but water, so as not to coes, and all badly, and could not even write his native tongue with correctness; and yet he clairaphy, as for all his other qualities While I was staying with him I became acquainted with some of his weak points, and endeavoured to correct thereat offence The fellorithed under a sense of obligation toa petition to the Court, which the king would have seen, and which would havehis na to say your most humble I pointed out to him that 'el mas inclito' meant the most illustrious, and that the Spanish for the expression he wanted was 'elme that he knew Spanish better than I, but when the dictionary was searched he had to s the bitter pill of confessing hi
Another time I suppressed a heavy and stupid criticism of his on someone who hadof the antediluvian period Mengs thought he would confound the author by citing the remains of the Tower of Babel--a double piece of folly, for in the first place there are no such remains, and in the second, the Tower of Babel was a post-diluvian building
He was also largely given to the discussion of e was si beauty in the abstract, and when he was on this topic the nonsense he talked was so dreadful