SECOND LONGER STAY ABROAD

(Continued)

Reflections on the Future of Denmark--Conversations with Giuseppe Saredo--Frascati--Native Beauty--New Susceptibilities--Georges Noufflard's Influence--The Sistine Chapel and Michael Angelo--Raphael's Loggias--A Radiant Spring.

I.

Saredo said to me one day: "I am not going to flatter you--I have no interest in doing so; but I am going to give you a piece of advice, which you ought to think over. Stay in Italy, settle down here, and you will reach a far higher position than you can possibly attain in your own country. The intellectual education you possess is exceedingly rare in Italy; what I can say, without exaggeration, is that in this country it is so extraordinary that it might be termed an active force. Within two years you would be a power in Italy, at home, you will never be more than a professor at a University. Stay here! Villari and I will help you over your first difficulties. Write in French, or Italian, which you like, and as you are master of the entire range of Germanic culture, which scarcely any man in Italy is, you will acquire an influence of which you have not the least conception. A prophet is never honoured in his own country. We, on the other hand, need you. So stay here! Take Max Müller as an example. It is with individuals as with nations; it is only when they change their soil that they attain their full development and realise their own strength."

I replied: "I am deaf to that sort of thing. I love the Danish language too well ever to forsake it. Only in the event of my settlement in Denmark meeting with opposition, and being rendered impossible, shall I strap on my knapsack, gird up my loins, and hie me to France or Italy; I am glad to hear that the world is not so closed to me as I had formerly believed."

My thoughts were much engaged on my sick-bed by reflections upon the future of Denmark. The following entry is dated March 8, 1871:

What do we mean by our national future, which we talk so much about? We do not purpose to extend our borders, to make conquests, or play any part in politics. For that, as is well comprehensible, we know we are too weak. I will leave alone the question as to whether it is possible to live without, in one way or another, growing, and ask: What do we want? To continue to exist. How exist? We want to get Slesvig back again, for as it is we are not existing; we are sickening, or else we are living like those lower animals who even when they are cut in pieces, are quite nimble; but it is a miserable life. We are in a false position with regard to Germany. The centripetal force that draws the individual members of one nationality together, and which we in Denmark call Danishness, that which, further, draws nationalities of the same family together, and which in Denmark is called Scandinavianism, must logically lead to a sympathy for the merging of the entire race, a kind of Gothogermanism. If we seek support from France, we shall be behaving like the Poles, turning for help to a foreign race against a nation of our own. I accuse us, not of acting imprudently, but of fighting against a natural force that is stronger than we. We can only retard, we cannot annihilate, the attraction exerted by the greater masses on the lesser. We can only hope that we may not live to feel the agony.

Holland and Denmark are both threatened by Germany, for in this geography is the mighty ally of Germany. The most enlightened Dane can only cherish the hope that Denmark, conquered, or not conquered, will brave it out long enough for universal civilisation, by virtue of the level it has reached, to bring our independence with it. As far as the hope which the majority of Danes cherish is concerned (including the noble professors of philosophy), of a time when Nemesis (reminiscence of theology!), shall descend on Prussia, this hope is only an outcome of foolishness. And even a Nemesis upon Prussia will never hurt Germany, and thus will not help us.

But the main question is this: If we--either through a peaceable restoration of Slesvig, or after fresh wars, or through the dawning of an era of peace and civilisation--regain our integrity and independence, shall we exist then? Not at all. Then we shall sicken again. A country like Denmark, even including Slesvig, is nowadays no country at all. A tradesman whose whole capital consists of ten rigsdaler is no tradesman. The large capitals swallow up the small. The small must seek their salvation in associations, partnerships, joint-stock companies, etc.

Our misfortune lies in the fact that there is no other country with which we can enter into partnership except Sweden and Norway, a little, unimportant state. By means of this association, which for the time being, is our sheet-anchor, and which, by dint of deploying enormous energy, might be of some importance, we can at best retard our destruction by a year or two. But the future! Has Denmark any future?

It was France who, to her own unspeakable injury, discovered, or rather, first proclaimed, the principle of nationality, a principle which at most could only give her Belgium and French Switzerland, two neutral countries, guaranteed by Europe, but which gave Italy to Piedmont, Germany to Prussia, and which one day will give Russia supremacy over all the Slavs.

Even before the war, France was, as it were, squeezed between bucklers; she had no possible chance of gaining anything through her own precious principle, and did not even dare to apply it to the two above-mentioned points. While she fearfully allowed herself to be awarded Savoy and Nice, Prussia grew from nineteen million inhabitants to fifty millions; and probably in a few years the Germans of Austria will fall to Germany as well. Then came the war, and its outcome was in every particular what Prévost-Paradol, with his keen foresight, had predicted: "Afterwards," he wrote, "France, with Paris, will take up in Europe the same position as Hellas with Athens assumed in the old Roman empire; it will become the city of taste and the noble delights; but it will never be able to regain its power." It has, in fact, been killed by this very theory of nationality; for the only cognate races, Spain and Italy, are two countries of which the one is rotten, the other just entered upon the convalescent stage. Thus it is clear that Germany will, for a time, exercise the supreme sway in Europe. But the future belongs neither to her nor to Russia, but, if not to England herself, at any rate to the Anglo-Saxon race, which has revealed a power of expansion in comparison with which that of other nations is too small to count. Germans who go to North America, in the next generation speak English. The English have a unique capacity for spreading themselves and introducing their language, and the power which the Anglo-Saxon race will acquire cannot be broken in course of time like that of ancient Rome; for there are no barbarians left, and their power is based, not on conquest, but on assimilation, and the race is being rejuvenated in North America.

How characteristic it is of our poor little country that we always hear and read of it as "one of the oldest kingdoms in the world." That is just the pity of it. If we were only a young country! There is only one way by which we can rejuvenate ourselves. First, to merge ourselves into a Scandinavia; then, when this is well done and well secured, to approach the Anglo-Saxon race to which we are akin. Moral: Become an Anglo-Saxon and study John Stuart Mill!

And I studied Mill with persevering attention, where he was difficult, but instructive, to follow, as in the Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, which renews Berkeley's teachings, and I read him with delight where, accessible and comprehensible, he proclaims with freshness and vigour the gospel of a new age, as in the book On Liberty and the one akin to it, Representative Government.

II.

During the months of February and March, my conversations with Giuseppe Saredo had been all I lived for. We discussed all the questions which one or both of us had at heart, from the causes of the expansion of Christianity, to the method of proportionate representation which Saredo knew, and correctly traced back to Andrae. When I complained that, by reason of our different nationality, we could hardly have any recollections in common, and by reason of our different languages, could never cite a familiar adage from childhood, or quote a common saying from a play, that the one could not thoroughly enjoy the harmony of verses in the language of the other, Saredo replied: "You are no more a Dane than I am an Italian; we are compatriots in the great fatherland of the mind, that of Shakespeare and Goethe, John Stuart Mill, Andrae, and Cavour. This land is the land of humanity. Nationality is milk, humanity is cream. What is there in all the world that we have not in common? It is true that we cannot enjoy together the harmony of some Northern verses, but we can assimilate together all the great ideas, and we have for each other the attraction of the relatively unknown, which fellow- countrymen have not."

He very acutely characterised his Italian compatriots: "Our intelligence amounts to prudence and common sense. At a distance we may appear self- luminous; in reality we are only passivity and reflected light. Solferino gave us Lombardy, Sadowa gave us Venice, Sedan gave us Rome. We were just active enough to take advantage of fortunate circumstances, and passively clever enough not to wreck our advantage by stupidity. In foreign novels we are scoundrels of the deepest dye, concocters of poisons and wholesale swindlers. In reality we are indifferent and indolent. Dolce far niente, these words, which, to our shame, are repeated in every country in Italian, are our watchword. But things shall be different, if it means that the few amongst us who have a little share of head and heart have to work themselves to death--things shall be different. Massimo d'Azeglio said: 'Now we have created an Italy; there remains to create Italians.' That was a true saying. Now we are creating the new people, and what a future there is before us! Now it is we who are taking the leadership of the Latin race, and who are giving back to our history its brilliance of the sixteenth century. At present our Art is poor because we have no popular type; but wait! In a few years Italy will show a profile no less full of character than in the days of Michael Angelo, and Benvenuto Cellini."

III.

Then the moment arrived when all abstract reflections were thrust aside once more by convalescence. I was well again, after having been shut up for over four months. I still felt the traces of the mercury poisoning, but I was no longer tied to my bed, and weak though I was, I could walk.

And on the very first day,--it was March 25th--armed with a borrowed stick (I possessed none, having never used a stick before), and equipped with a little camp-stool, I took the train to Frascati, where there was a Madonna Fête.

It was life opening out before me again. All that I saw, witnessed to its splendour. First, the scenery on the way, the Campagna with its proud ruins, and the snow-covered Sabine Mountains, the whole illuminated by a powerful Summer sun; the villas of old Romans, with fortress-like thick walls, and small windows; then the fertile lava soil, every inch of which was under vineyard cultivation. At last the mountains in the neighborhood of Frascati. A convent crowned the highest point; there, in olden days, the first Italian temple to Jupiter had stood, and there Hannibal had camped. Underneath, in a hollow, like an eagle's nest, lay Rocca di Papa. By the roadside, fruit-trees with violet clusters of blossoms against a background of stone-pines, cypresses, and olive-groves.

I reached Frascati station. There was no carriage to be had up to the town, so I was obliged to ascend the hill slowly on foot, a test which my leg stood most creditably. In the pretty market-place of Frascati, with its large fountain which, like Acqua Paola, was divided into three and flung out a tremendous quantity of water, I went into an osteria and asked for roast goat with salad and Frascati wine, then sat down outside, as it was too close within. Hundreds of people in gay costumes, with artificial flowers and silver feathers in their headgear, filled the square in front of me, crowded the space behind me, laughed and shouted.

The people seemed to be of a grander type, more lively, animated and exuberant, than at the fair at Fiesole. The women were like Junos or Venuses, the men, even when clad in abominable rags, looked like Vulcans, blackened in their forges; they were all of larger proportions than Northern men and women. A Roman beau, with a riding-whip under his arm, was making sheep's eyes at a young local beauty, his courtship accompanied by the whines of the surrounding beggars. A signora from Albano was lecturing the waiter with the dignity of a queen for having brought her meat that was beneath all criticism, yes, she even let the word porcheria escape her. A brown-bearded fellow came out of the inn with a large bottle of the heavenly Frascati wine, which the landlords here, even on festival occasions, never mix with water, and gave a whole family, sitting on donkeys, to drink out of one glass; then he went to two little ones, who were holding each other round the waist, sitting on the same donkey; to two youths who were riding another; to a man and wife, who sat on a third, and all drank, like the horsemen in Wouwerman's pictures, without dismounting.

I got into an old, local omnibus, pulled by three horses, to drive the two miles to Grotta Ferrata, where the fair was. But the vehicle was hardly about to start up-hill when, with rare unanimity, the horses reared, behaved like mad, and whirled it round four or five times. The driver, a fellow with one eye and a grey cap with a double red camelia in it, being drunk, thrashed the horses and shouted, while an old American lady with ringlets shrieked inside the omnibus, and bawled out that she had paid a franc beforehand, and now wanted to get out. The road was thronged with people walking, and there was just as many riding donkeys, all of them, even the children, already heated with wine, singing, laughing, and accosting everybody. Many a worthy woman supported her half-drunk husband with her powerful arm. Many a substantial signora from Rocca di Papa sat astride her mule, showing without the least bashfulness her majestic calves.

At Grotta Ferrata, the long, long street presented a human throng of absolute density without the slightest crush, for no one stuck his elbows into his neighbour's sides. The eye could only distinguish a mass of red, yellow and white patches in the sunlight, and in between them a few donkeys' heads and mules' necks. The patches were the kerchiefs on the women's heads. Folk stood with whole roast pigs in front of them on a board, cutting off a piece with a knife for anyone who was hungry; there were sold, besides, fruits, knives, ornaments, provisions, and general market wares. One osteria, the entrance to which was hung all over with sausages, onions and vegetables, in garlands, had five huge archways open to the street. Inside were long tables, at which people sat, not on benches, but on trestles, round bars supported by two legs, and ate and drank in the best of good spirits, and the blackest filth, for the floor was the black, sodden, trampled earth. Just over the way, arbours had been made from trees, by intertwining their branches and allowing them to grow into one another; these were quite full of gay, beautiful girls, amongst them one with fair hair and brown eyes, who looked like a Tuscan, and from whom it was difficult to tear one's eyes away.

After having inspected the courtyard of an old monastery, the lovely pillars of which rejoiced my heart, I sat down a little on one side in the street where the fair was, on my little camp-stool, which roused the legitimate curiosity of the peasant girls. They walked round me, looked at me from behind and before, and examined with grave interest the construction of my seat. In front of me sat an olive and lemon seller. Girls bargained with him as best they could in the press, others stood and looked on. I had an opportunity here of watching their innate statuesque grace. When they spoke, the right arm kept time with their speech. When silent, they generally placed one hand on the hip, bent, but not clenched. There were various types. The little blonde, blue-eyed girl with the mild Madonna smile, and absolutely straight nose, and the large-made, pronounced brunette. But the appearance of them all was such that an artist or a poet could, by a slight transformation, have portrayed from them whatever type of figure or special characteristic he required. In my opinion, the form Italian beauty took, and the reason of the feeling one had in Italy of wading in beauty, whereas one hardly ever saw anything in the strict sense of the word beautiful in Copenhagen, and rarely in Paris, was, that this beauty was the beauty of the significant. All these women looked to be unoppressed, fullblown, freely developed. All that makes woman ugly in the North: the cold, the thick, ugly clothes that the peasant women wear, the doublet of embarrassment and vapidity which they drag about with them, the strait- waistcoat of Christiansfeldt morality in which they are confined by the priests, by protestantism, by fashion, by custom and convention--none of this oppressed, confined or contracted women here. These young peasant girls looked as if they had never heard such words as "You must not," or "You shall not," and as here in Italy there is none of the would-be witty talk, the grinning behind people's backs, which takes the life out of all intrepidity in the North, no one thought: "What will people say?" Everyone dressed and deported himself with complete originality, as he, or rather as she, liked. Hence eyes were doubly brilliant, blood coursed twice as red, the women's busts were twice as rounded and full.

IV.

From this time forth I had a strange experience. I saw beauty everywhere. If I sat at the window of a café on the Corso on a Sunday morning, as the ladies were going to Mass, it seemed to me that all the beauty on earth was going past. A mother and her three daughters went by, a mere grocer's wife from the Corso, but the mother carried herself like a duchess, had a foot so small that it could have lain in the hollow of my hand, and the youngest of the three daughters was so absolutely lovely that people turned to look after her; she might perhaps have been fifteen years of age, but there was a nobility about her austere profile, and she had a way of twisting her perfect lips into a smile, that showed her to be susceptible to the sweetest mysteries of poetry and music. My long illness had so quickened the susceptibility of my senses to impressions of beauty that I lived in a sort of intoxication.

In the Scandinavian Club I was received with endless expressions of sympathy, courteous remarks, and more or less sincerely meant flatteries, as if in compensation for the suffering I had been through. All spoke as though they had themselves been deeply distressed, and especially as though Copenhagen had been sitting weeping during my illness. I certainly did not believe this for a moment, but all the same it weighed down a little, the balance of my happiness, and the first meetings with the Northern artists in these glorious surroundings were in many respects very enjoyable. The Scandinavian Club was in the building from which you enter the Mausoleum of Augustus, a colossal building in the form of a cross, several storeys in height. A festival had been got up on the flat roof for a benevolent object one of the first evenings in April. You mounted the many flights of stairs and suddenly found yourself, apparently, in an immense hall, but with no roof save the stars, and brilliantly illuminated, but with lights that paled in the rays of the Italian moon. We took part in the peculiarly Italian enjoyment of watching balloons go up; they rose by fire, which exhausted the air inside them and made them light. Round about the moon we could see red and blue lights, like big stars; one balloon ignited up in the sky, burst into bright flames, and looked very impressive.

Troops of young women, too, were sitting there, and dazzled anew a young man who for a second time had given the slip to the old gentleman with the scythe. There was one young servant girl from the country, in particular, a child of thirteen or fourteen, to whom I called the attention of the painters, and they went into ecstasies over her. The type was the same as that which Raphael has reproduced in his Sistine Madonna. Her clear, dark blue eyes had a look of maidenly shyness, and of the most exquisite bashfulness, and yet a look of pride. She wore a string of glass beads round her lovely neck. We ordered two bottles of wine to drink her health, and, while we were drinking it, the rotunda was lighted up from a dozen directions with changing Bengal fire. The ladies looked even handsomer, the glass lamps dark green in the gleam, the fire-borne balloons rose, the orchestra played, the women smiled at the homage of their friends and lovers--all on the venerable Mausoleum of Augustus.

V.

I made the acquaintance that evening of a young and exceedingly engaging Frenchman, who was to become my intimate friend and my travelling companion. He attracted me from the first by his refined, reserved, and yet cordial manner.

Although only thirty-five years of age, Georges Noufflard had travelled and seen surprisingly much. He was now in Italy for the second time, knew France and Germany, had travelled through Mexico and the United States, had visited Syria, Egypt, Tunis, and Algiers to the last oasis. When the conversation touched upon Art and Music, he expressed himself in a manner that revealed keen perception, unusual knowledge, and a very individual taste.

The following morning, when we met on the Corso, he placed himself at my disposal, if he could be of use to me; there was nothing he had arranged to do. He asked where I was thinking of going; as he knew Rome and its neighbourhood as well as I knew my mother's drawing-room, I placed myself in his hands. We took a carriage and drove together, first to the baths of Caracalla, then to the Catacombs, where we very nearly lost our way, and thought with a thrill of what in olden times must have been the feelings of the poor wretches who fled there, standing in the dark and hearing footsteps in the distance, knowing that it was their pursuers coming, and that they were inevitably going to be murdered, where there was not even room to raise a weapon in their own defence. Next we drove to San Paolo fuori le mure, of the burning of which Thorwaldsen's Museum possesses a painting by Leopold Robert, but which at that time had been entirely re-built in the antique style. It was the most beautiful basilica I had ever seen. We enjoyed the sight of the courtyard of the monastery nearly 1,700 years old, with its fine pillars, all different, and so well preserved that we compared, in thought, the impressions produced by the two mighty churches, San Paolo and San Pietro. Then we dined together and plunged into interminable discussions until darkness fell. From that day forth we were inseparable. Our companionship lasted several months, until I was obliged to journey North. But the same cordial relations continued to subsist between us for more than a quarter of a century, when Death robbed me of my friend.

Georges Noufflard was the son of a rich cloth manufacturer at Roubaix, and at an early age had come into possession of a considerable fortune. This, however, was somewhat diminished through the dishonesty of those who, after the death of his father, conducted the works in his name. He had wanted to become a painter, but the weakness of his eyes had obliged him to give up Art; now he was an Art lover, and was anxious to write a book on the memorials and works of art in Rome, too great an undertaking, and for that reason never completed; but at the same time, he pursued with passion the study of music, played Beethoven, Gluck and Berlioz, for me daily, and later on published books on Berlioz and Richard Wagner.

As a youth he had been an enthusiast such as, in the Germanic countries, they fancy is impossible elsewhere, to such an extent indeed as would be regarded even there as extraordinary. At seventeen years of age he fell in love with a young girl who lived in the same building as himself. He was only on terms of sign language with her, had not even secured so much as a conversation with her. None the less, his infatuation was so great that he declared to his father that he wished to marry her. The father would not give his consent, and her family would not receive him unless he was presented by his father. The latter sent him to America with the words: "Forget your love and learn what a fine thing industrialism is." He travelled all over the United States, found all machinery loathsome, since he had not the most elementary knowledge of the principles of mechanics, and no inclination for them, and thought all the time of the little girl from whom they wished to separate him. It did not help matters that the travelling companion that had been given him lived and breathed in an atmosphere of the lowest debauchery, and did his best to initiate the young man into the same habits. On his return home he declared to his father that he persisted in his choice. "Good," said his father, "Asia Minor is a delightful country, and so is Northern Africa; it will also do you good to become acquainted with Italy." So he set off on his travels again, and this time was charmed with everything he saw. Then his father died, and he became pretty much his own master and free to do as he liked. Then he learned that the father of the girl had been guilty of a bank fraud. His family would not receive hers, if, indeed, herself. So he gave up his intention; he did not wish to expose her to humiliation and did not wish himself to have a man of ill-fame for his father-in-law; he set off again on his travels, and remained a long time away. "The proof that I acted wisely by so doing," he said in conclusion, "is that I have completely forgotten the girl; my infatuation was all fancy."

When he commenced by telling me that for three years he had loved, and despite all opposition, wished to marry a girl to whom he had never spoken, I exclaimed: "Why, you are no Frenchman!" When he concluded by telling me that after remaining constant for three years he had abandoned her for a fault that not she, but her father, had committed, I exclaimed: "How French you are, after all!"

While mutual political, social, and philosophical interests drew me to Giuseppe Saredo, all the artistic side of my nature bound me to Georges Noufflard. Saredo was an Italian from a half-French part,--he was born at Savona, near Chambéry,--and his culture was as much French as Italian; Noufflard was a Frenchman possessed by such a love for Italy that he spoke the purest Florentine, felt himself altogether a Southerner, and had made up his mind to take up his permanent abode in Italy. He married, too, a few years afterwards, a lovely Florentine woman, and settled down in Florence.

What entirely won my heart about him was the femininely delicate consideration and unselfish devotion of his nature, the charm there was about his manner and conversation, which revealed itself in everything he did, from the way in which he placed his hat upon his head, to the way in which he admired a work of art. But I could not have associated with him day after day, had I not been able to learn something from him. When we met again ten years later, it turned out that we had nothing especially new to tell each other. I had met him just at the right moment.

It was not only that Noufflard was very well and widely informed about the artistic treasures of Italy and the places where they were to be found, but his opinions enriched my mind, inasmuch as they spurred me on to contradiction or surprised me and won my adherence. Fresh as Julius Lange's artistic sense had been, there was nevertheless something doctrinaire and academic about it. An artist like Bernini was horrible, and nothing else to him; he had no sympathy for the sweet, half-sensual ecstasy of some of Bernini's best figures. He was an enemy of eighteenth-century art in France, saw it through the moral spectacles which in the Germanic countries had come into use with the year 1800. It was easy for Noufflard to remain unbiased by Northern doctrines, for he did not know them; he had the free eye of the beauty lover for every revelation of beauty, no matter under what form, and had the intellectual kinship of the Italianised Frenchman for many an artist unappreciated in the North. On the other hand, he naturally considered that we Northmen very much over-estimated our own. It was impossible to rouse any interest in him for Thorwaldsen, whom he considered absolutely academic. "You cannot call him a master in any sense," he exclaimed one day, when we had been looking at Thorwaldsen bas-reliefs side by side with antiques. I learnt from my intimacy with Noufflard how little impression Thorwaldsen's spirit makes on the Romance peoples. That indifference to him would soon become so widespread in Germany, I did not yet foresee.

Noufflard had a very alert appreciation of the early Renaissance, especially in sculpture; he was passionately in love with the natural beauties of Italy, from North to South, and he had a kind of national- psychological gift of singling out peculiarly French, Italian or German traits. He did not know the German language, but he was at home in German music, and had studied a great deal of German literature in translation; just then he was reading Hegel's "Aesthetics," the abstractions in which veritably alarmed him, and to which he very much preferred modern French Art Philosophy. In English Science, he had studied Darwin, and he was the first to give me a real insight into the Darwinian theory and a general summary of it, for in my younger days I had only heard it attacked, as erroneous, in lectures by Rasmus Nielsen on teleology.

Georges Noufflard was the first Frenchman of my own age with whom I had been intimate and whose character I partly understood and entered into, partly absorbed into my own. If many of the various opinions evident in my first lectures were strikingly emancipated from Danish national prejudices which no one hitherto had attempted to disturb, I owed this in a great measure to him. Our happy, harmonious intimacy in the Sabine Hills and in Naples was responsible, before a year was past, for whole deluges of abuse in Danish newspapers.

VI.

One morning, the Consul's man-servant brought me a permesso for the Collection of Sculpture in the Vatican for the same day, and a future permesso for the Loggias, Stanzas, and the Sistine Chapel. I laid the last in my pocket-book. It was the key of Paradise. I had waited for it so long that I said to myself almost superstitiously: "I wonder whether anything will prevent again?" The anniversary of the day I had left Copenhagen the year before, I drove to the Vatican, went at one o'clock mid-day up the handsome staircase, and through immense, in part magnificently decorated rooms to the Sistine Chapel. I had heard so much about the disappointment it would be that not the very slightest suggestion of disappointment crossed my mind. Only a feeling of supreme happiness shot through me: at last I am here. I stood on the spot which was the real goal of my pilgrimage. I had so often examined reproductions of every figure and I had read so much about the whole, that I knew every note of the music beforehand. Now I heard it.

A voice within me whispered: So here I stand at last, shut in with the mind that of all human minds has spoken most deeply home to my soul. I am outside and above the earth and far from human kind. This is his earth and these are his men, created in his image to people his world. For this one man's work is a world, which, though that of one man only, can be placed against the productions of a whole nation, even of the most splendid nation that has ever lived, the Greeks. Michael Angelo felt more largely, more lonely, more mightily than any other. He created out of the wealth of a nature that in its essence was more than earthly. Raphael is more human, people say, and that is true; but Michael Angelo is more divine.

After the lapse of about an hour, the figures detached themselves from the throng, to my mental vision, and the whole composition fixed itself in my brain. I saw the ceiling, not merely as it is to-day, but as it was when the colours were fresh, for in places there were patches, the bright yellow, for instance, which showed the depth of colouring in which the whole had been carried out. It was Michael Angelo's intention to show us the ceiling pierced and the heavens open above it. Up to the central figures, we are to suppose that the walls continue straight up to the ceiling, as though the figures sat upright. Then all confusion disappears, and all becomes one perfect whole.

The principal pictures, such as the creation of Adam, Michael Angelo's most philosophical and most exquisite painting, I had had before my eyes upon my wall every day for ten years. The expression in Adam's face was not one of languishing appeal, as I had thought; he smiled faintly, as if calmly confident of the dignity of the life the finger of God is about to bestow upon him. The small, bronze-painted figures, expressed the suspension and repose of the ceiling; they were architectonic symbols. The troops of young heroes round about the central pillars were Michael Angelo's ideals of Youth, Beauty and Humanity. The one resting silently and thoughtfully on one knee is perhaps the most splendid. There is hardly any difference between his build and that of Adam. Adam is the more spiritual brother of these young and suffering heroes.

I felt the injustice of all the talk about the beginnings of grotesqueness in Michael Angelo's style. There are a few somewhat distorted figures, Haman, the knot of men and women adoring the snake, Jonas, as he flings himself backwards, but except these, what calm, what grandiose perfection! And which was still more remarkable, what imposing charm! Eve, in the picture of "The Fall," is perhaps the most adorable figure that Art has ever produced; her beauty, in the picture on the left, was like a revelation of what humanity really ought to have been.

It sounded almost like a lie that one man had created this in twenty-two months. Would the earth ever again produce frescoes of the same order? The 360 years that had passed over it had damaged this, the greatest pictorial work on earth, far less than I had feared.

A large aristocratic English family came in: man, wife, son, daughter, another daughter, the governess, all expensively and fashionably dressed. They stood silent for a moment at the entrance to the hall. Then they came forward as far as about the middle of the hall, looked up and about a little, said to the custodian: "Will you open the door for us?" and went out again very gracefully.

VII.

I knew Raphael's Loggias from copies in l'École des Beaux Arts in Paris. But I was curious to see how they would appear after this, and so, although there was only three-quarters of an hour left of the time allotted to me on my permesso, I went up to look at them. My first impression, as I glanced down the corridor and perceived these small ceiling pictures, barely two feet across, was: "Good gracious! This will be a sorry enjoyment after Michael Angelo!" I looked at the first painting, God creating the animals, and was quite affected: There goes the good old man, saying paternally: "Come up from the earth, all of you, you have no idea how nice it is up here." My next impression was: "How childish!" But my last was: "What genius!" How charming the picture of the Fall, and how lovely Eve! And what grandeur of style despite the smallness of the space. A God a few inches high separates light from darkness, but there is omnipotence in the movement of His arm. Jacob sees the ladder to Heaven in his dream; and this ladder, which altogether has six angels upon it, seems to reach from Earth to Heaven, infinitely long and infinitely peopled; above, we see God the Father, at an immense distance, spread His gigantic embrace (which covers a space the length of two fingers). There was the favourite picture of my childhood, Abraham prostrated before the Angels, even more marvellous in the original than I had fancied it to myself, although it is true that the effect of the picture is chiefly produced by its beauty of line. And there was Lot, departing from Sodom with his daughters, a picture great because of the perfect illusion of movement. They go on and on, against the wind and storm, with Horror behind them and Hope in front, at the back, to the right, the burning city, to the left, a smiling landscape. How unique the landscapes on all these pictures are, how marvellous, for instance, that in which Moses is found on the Nile! This river, within the narrow limits of the picture, looked like a huge stream, losing itself in the distance.

It was half-past five. My back was beginning to ache in the place which had grown tender from lying so long; without a trace of fatigue I had been looking uninterruptedly at pictures for four hours and a half.

VIII.

Noufflard's best friend in Rome was a young lieutenant of the Bersaglieri named Ottavio Cerrotti, with whom we were much together. Although a Roman, he had entered the Italian army very young, and had consequently been, as it were, banished. Now, through the breach at Porta Pia, he had come back. He was twenty-four years of age, and the naïvest Don Juan one could possibly meet. He was beloved by the beautiful wife of his captain, and Noufflard, who frequented their house, one day surprised the two lovers in tears. Cerrotti was crying with his lady-love because he had been faithless to her. He had confessed to her his intimacy with four other young ladies; so she was crying, and the end of it was that he cried to keep her company.

At meals, he gave us a full account of his principal romance. He had one day met her by chance in the gardens of the Palazzo Corsini, and since that day, they had had secret meetings. But the captain had now been transferred to Terni, and tragedy had begun. Letters were constantly within an ace of being intercepted, they committed imprudences without count. He read aloud to us, without the least embarrassment, the letters of the lady. The curious thing about them was the moderation she exercised in the expression of her love, while at the same time her plans for meetings were of the most foolhardy, breakneck description.

Another fresh acquaintance that I made in those days was with three French painters, Hammon, Sain and Benner, who had studios adjoining one another. Hammon and Sain both died long since, but Benner, whom I met again in Paris in 1904, died, honoured and respected, in 1905. I was later on at Capri in company with Sain and Benner, but Hammon I saw only during this visit to Rome. His pretty, somewhat sentimental painting, Ma soeur n'y est pas, hung, reproduced in engraving, in every shop-window, even in Copenhagen. He was painting just then at his clever picture, Triste Rivage.

Hammon was born in Brittany, of humble, orthodox parents, who sent him to a monastery. The Prior, when he surprised him drawing men and women out of his head, told him that painting was a sin. The young man himself then strongly repented his inclination, but, as he felt he could not live without following it, he left the monastery, though with many strong twinges of conscience.

Now that he was older, he was ruining himself by drink, but had manifested true talent and still retained a humorous wit. One day that I was with him, a young man came to the studio and asked for his opinion of a painting; the man talked the whole time of nothing but his mother, of how much he loved her and all that he did for her. Hammon's patience gave out at last. He broke out: "And do you think, sir, that I have murdered my mother? I love her very much, I assure you, not enough to marry her, I grant, but pretty well, all the same." After that he always spoke of him as "the young man who loves his mother."

IX.

I felt as though this April, this radiant Spring, were the most glorious time in my life, I was assimilating fresh impressions of Art and Nature every hour; the conversations I was enjoying with my Italian and French friends set me day by day pondering over new thoughts; I saw myself restored to life, and a better life. At the beginning of April, moreover, some girls from the North made their triumphal entry into the Scandinavian Club. Without being specially beautiful or remarkable, they absolutely charmed me. It was a full year since the language of home had sounded in my ears from the lips of a girl, since I had seen the smile in the blue eyes and encountered the heart-ensnaring charm, in jest, or earnest, of the young women of the North. I had recently heard the entrancing castrato singing at St. Peter's, and, on conquering my aversion, could not but admire it. Now I heard once more simple, but natural, Danish and Swedish songs. Merely to speak Danish again with a young woman, was a delight. And there was one who, delicately and unmistakably and defencelessly, showed me that I was not indifferent to her. That melted me, and from that time forth the beauties of Italy were enhanced tenfold in my eyes.

All that I was acquainted with in Rome, all that I saw every day with Georges Noufflard, I could show her and her party, from the most accessible things, which were nevertheless fresh to the newcomers, such as the Pantheon, Acqua Paola, San Pietro in Montorio, the grave of Cecilia Metella, and the grottoes of Egeria, to the great collections of Art in the Vatican, or the Capitol, or in the wonderful Galleria Borghese. All this, that I was accustomed to see alone with Noufflard, acquired new splendour when a blonde girl walked by my side, asking sensible questions, and showing me the gratitude of youth for good instruction. With her nineteen years I suppose she thought me marvellously clever. But the works of Art that lay a little outside the beaten track, I likewise showed to my compatriots. I had never been able to tolerate Guido Reni; but his playing angels in the chapel of San Gregorio excited my profound admiration, and it was a satisfaction to me to pour this into the receptive ear of a girl compatriot. These angels delighted me so that I could hardly tear myself away from them. The fine malice, the mild coquetry, even in the expression of the noblest purity and the loftiest dignity, enchanted us.

I had been in the habit of going out to the environs of Rome with Georges Noufflard, for instance, to the large, handsome gardens of the Villa Doria Pamfili, or the Villa Madama, with its beautiful frescoes and stucco-work, executed by Raphael's pupils, Giulio Romano and others, from drawings by that master. But it was a new delight to drive over the Campagna with a girl who spoke Danish by my side, and to see her Northern complexion in the sun of the South. With my French friend, I gladly joined the excursions of her party to Nemi, Albano, Tivoli.

Never in my life had I felt so happy as I did then. I was quite recovered. Only a fortnight after I had risen from a sick-bed that had claimed me four months and a half, I was going about, thanks to my youth, as I did before I was ill. For my excursions, I had a comrade after my own heart, well-bred, educated, and noble-minded; I fell in love a little a few times a week; I saw lakes, fields, olive groves, mountains, scenery, exactly to my taste. I had always a permesso for the Vatican collections in my pocket. I felt intoxicated with delight, dizzy with enjoyment.

It seemed to me that of all I had seen in the world, Tivoli was the most lovely. The old "temple of the Sibyl" on the hill stood on consecrated ground, and consecrated the whole neighbourhood. I loved those waterfalls, which impressed me much more than Trollhättan [Footnote: Trollhättan, a celebrated waterfall near Göteborg in Sweden.], had done in my childhood. In one place the water falls down, black and boiling, into a hollow of the rock, and reminded me of the descent into Tartarus; in another the cataract runs, smiling and twinkling with millions of shining pearls, in the strong sunlight. In a third place, the great cascade rushes down over the rocks. There, where it touches the nether rocks, rests the end of the enormous rainbow which, when the sun shines, is always suspended across it. Noufflard told me that Niagara itself impressed one less. We scrambled along the cliff until we stood above the great waterfall, and could see nothing but the roaring, foaming white water, leaping and dashing down; it looked as though the seething and spraying masses of water were springing over each other's heads in a mad race, and there was such power, such natural persuasion in it, that one seemed drawn with it, and gliding, as it were, dragged into the abyss. It was as though all Nature were disembodied, and flinging herself down.

Like a Latin, Noufflard personified it all; he saw the dance of nymphs in the waves, and their veils in the clouds of spray. My way of regarding Nature was diametrically opposite, and pantheistic. I lost consciousness of my own personality, felt myself one with the falling water and merged myself into Nature, instead of gathering it up into figures. I felt myself an individuality of the North, conscious of my being.

X.

One afternoon a large party of us had taken our meal at an inn on the lake of Nemi. The evening was more than earthly. The calm, still, mountain lake, the old, filled-up crater, on the top of the mountain, had a fairy-like effect. I dropped down behind a boulder and lay for a long time alone, lost in ecstasy, out of sight of the others. All at once I saw a blue veil fluttering in the breeze quite near me. It was the young Danish girl, who had sat down with me. The red light of the evening, Nemi and she, merged in one. Not far away some people were setting fire to a blaze of twigs and leaves; one solitary bird warbled across the lake; the cypresses wept; the pines glowered; the olive trees bathed their foliage in the mild warmth; one cloud sailed across the sky, and its reflection glided over the lake. One could not bear to raise the voice.

It was like a muffled, muffled concert. Here were life, reality and dreams. Here were sun, warmth and light. Here were colour, form and line, and in this line, outlined by the mountains against the sky, the artistic background of all the beauty.

Noufflard and I accompanied our Northern friends from Albano to the station; they were going on as far as Naples, and thence returning home. We said good-bye and walked back to Albano in the mild Summer evening. The stars sparkled and shone bright, Cassiopaeia showed itself in its most favourable position, and Charles's Wain stood, as if in sheer high spirits, on its head, which seemed to be its recreation just about this time.

It, too, was evidently a little dazed this unique, inimitable Spring.