. Happy days of
the present, blessed revolution of modern life, that dignifies the
artist, and places him under the protection of the public, an impersonal
sovereign that leaves the creator of beauty free and ends by even
following him in new-created paths!

Renovales went up to the central gallery in search of another of his
favorites. The works of Goya filled a large space on both walls. On one
side the portraits of the kings and queens of the Bourbon decadence;
heads of monarchs, or princes, crushed under their white wigs; sharp
feminine eyes, bloodless faces, with their hair combed in the form of a
tower. The two great painters had coincided in their lives with the
moral downfall of two dynasties. In the Hall of Velasquez the thin,
bony, fair-haired kings, of monastic grace and anaemic pallor, with
their protruding under-jaws, and in their eyes an expression of doubt
and fear for the salvation of their souls. Here, the corpulent, clumsy
monarchs, with their huge, heavy noses, fatefully pendulous, as though
by some mysterious relation they were dragging on the brain, paralyzing
its functions; their thick underlips, hanging in sensual inertia; their
eyes, calm as those of cattle, reflecting in their tranquil light
indifference for everything that did not directly concern their own
well-being. The Austrians, nervous, restless, vacillating with the fever
of insanity, riding on theatrical chargers, in dark landscapes, bounded
by the snowy crests of the Guadarrama, as sad, cold and crystallized as
the soul of the nation; the Bourbons, peaceful, adipose,
resting--surfeited--on their huge calves, without any other thought than
the hunt of the following day or the domestic intrigue that would set
the family in dissension, deaf to the storms that thundered beyond the
Pyrenees. The one, surrounded by brutal-faced imbeciles, by gloomy
pettifoggers, by Infantas with childish faces and the hollow skirts of a
Virgin's image on an altar; the others bringing as a merry, unconcerned
retinue, a rabble clad in bright colors, wrapped in scarlet capes or
lace mantillas, crowned with ornamental combs or masculine hats--a race
that, without knowing it, was sapping its heroism in picnics at the
Canal or in grotesque amusements. The lash of invasion aroused them from
their century-long infancy. The same great artist that for many years
had portrayed the simple thoughtlessness of this gay people, showy and
light-hearted as a comic-opera choru