Part 19 (1/2)
I stood there like a bit of stucco, looking at the young man, and then at the person who had spoken to me thus. Then I answered--
”Tell me, does this gentleman speak, or at least understand, Italian?
Has he understood what you have just said of him?”
”Oh no! he only speaks English; he is an American.”
”The Lord be thanked,” muttered I to myself, ”that the poor young man understood nothing!” But this polite person, misunderstanding my question, began--
”Now I will tell him what I have said to you.”
And he began in English to repeat the little tirade that he had given me, and this genius of a young man nodded his head at every phrase, looking at me, at the stool, and at the cat!
CHAPTER XII.
POMPEII--A CAMEO--SKETCH FOR THE BACCO DELLA CRITTOGAMA--PROFESSOR ANGELINI THE SCULPTOR--ONE MUST NOT OFFER ONE'S HAND WITH TOO MUCH FREEDOM TO LADIES--A HARD-HEARTED WOMAN WITH SMALL INTELLIGENCE--THE SAN CARLO, THE SAN CARLINO, THE FENICE, AND THE SEBETO--MONUMENT BY DONATELLO AT NAPLES--THE BAROCCO AND MISTAKEN OPINIONS--DILETTANTI IN THE FINE ARTS--PRINCE DON SEBASTIAN OF BOURBON--IS THE BEARD A SIGN OF BEING LEGITIMIST OR LIBERAL?--I AM TAKEN FOR A PRINCE OR SOMETHING LIKE ONE--”THE BOTTLE” FOR DOORKEEPERS AND CUSTODI OF THE PUBLIC MUSEUMS OF NAPLES--PHIDIAS, DEMOSTHENES, AND CICERO ALL AGAINST RUGGERO BONGHI.
I summoned up all my little stock of patience, and moved slowly towards the door, they following me. Thanking the gentlemen, I shut them out, and returned in silence to my work. This happened some thirty years ago, nor as yet does it seem as if the prophecy about that young man were realised.
To return to ourselves. ”Appet.i.te comes with eating,” as the proverb has it; and in fact, by degrees, as I visited the museums, the churches, and the studios of the Neapolitan artists, I felt an increasing desire to do something, to try again to draw or to model, were it but a mere trifle.
One day, after having gone over the whole breadth and length of the excavations at Pompeii, I was examining a mosaic pavement made out of a great many pretty little coloured stones, some of them broken away from their place; and bending down to examine it closer, I touched one of the stones. The _custode_ hastened to say to me, ”Don't touch, signor--the regulations prohibit it.” It cannot be denied that I have always been disposed to respect all regulations; but since I had seen them broken, even by those who ought to have been the first to respect them, I had taken them in dudgeon. I looked at the _custode_, and he at me, and we understood each other at once. I took a turn, went to the door, looked to the right and to the left of me, and coming back, as I was taking something out of my pocket I dropped some money on the ground.
[Sidenote: A LITTLE CAMEO-HEAD.]
My friend picked it up for me, and I gave him a _carlino_. We returned to the room where the mosaic pavement was. It represented a race of animals, hares and dogs, on a yellow ground. Some of the little stones were loose, and already many were missing; they were small squares about as large as my little-finger nail. I bent down again, and stretched out my hand, looking at the guard, who for decency's sake turned in the other direction; and I took the little stone, on which, with a great deal of patience and increasing gusto, I drew and engraved a small head after the fas.h.i.+on of a cameo, roughing it out at first with the point of a penknife, and finis.h.i.+ng it off with sharpened needles fastened into little handles, which I used in the place of small chisels and burins. I always keep this little head, which was set in gold as a pin, and sometimes wear it in my necktie. When I look at this small piece of workmans.h.i.+p, I am astonished at my patience and my eyesight at that time.
To tell the truth, when I picked up that little stone I had no idea of working on it, but merely took it as a remembrance of the day and the place. In touching it, I thought that it had been shaped and put there by a man like myself, two thousand years ago. In holding that little square stone between my fingers, it seemed to me as if my hand touched the hand of that man, who then was full of life. I thought of his scant dust, now dispersed, transformed but not lost! Where is this dust now?
I, where was I then? While I was thinking on this, my good Marina approached, and said--
”Do you find any beauty in that little stone?”
[Sidenote: VESUVIUS AND ITS LAVA.]
”No. I was thinking that it is very old. I was thinking that it is a fusion of fire, and in substance lava. But was not Vesuvius unknown at the time that this city was constructed? Could you imagine that they would have been so insane as to have built on the outskirts of a mountain vomiting fire? Have you not observed that in all the many paintings on these houses, where you find over and over again landscapes, sea views, animals, figures, in fact everything, that there is never the slightest trace of a view of Vesuvius? If it had been there, surely they would not have failed to reproduce in painting such a marvellous phenomenon. Therefore it could not have been there; and yet all these mosaics are made of lava, and all the surrounding country at a certain distance below the surface of the ground is covered with it. It was not there, I say, in their memory; but when was it there?”
”Do you know?” said my wife.
”I?--no, indeed.”
”Then you can imagine if I do.”
After this small cameo, I wished to model a little figure in bas-relief, which it was my intention to have executed on a sh.e.l.l cameo, and I gave the order for it; but the workmen employed for this kind of work are so unintelligent that if you take them away from the work they are accustomed to do almost mechanically, they are not able to succeed in doing anything. The little figure represented Medicine. She was seated on a stool, and with a little stick was pus.h.i.+ng aside the bushes to look for some medicinal plants; but in doing so a serpent had wound itself around her stick, as it is said to have happened to aesculapius. Behind the stone on which she is seated flows a little stream of water, to denote the salutary action of water by which I was cured, and to which she turns her back.
[Sidenote: NEW SKETCH OF THE BACCHUS.]
I also made a new sketch for the Bacchino della Crittogama, which was the one that I afterwards made of life-size on my return from Naples.
The one I had left behind me in clay was very different, and I destroyed it. I had this new sketch baked, and I remember one day when I went to get it from the man who sells _terre cotte_, near Santa Lucia, to whom I had given it to bake, that I found him arguing with a stranger who had taken it absolutely into his head to buy it. It was useless for the man to say that the statuette did not belong to him; that he could not sell it; that it was not finished; and that his little figures of Apollo, the Idolino, Venus, and Flora were far better and more finished than this sketch: he only kept repeating, ”I like this, and want to buy it;” and all persuasion was useless. I put an end to the discussion in two words, saying to the man--