ixt Milan and
Como, on this quiet, sun-steeped afternoon in early Spring, with a
horrible outrage being committed under their very eyes, these callous
clowns pursue their absurd avocations, without so much as resting for
one moment to see what is going on.

Cavina plants the dagger methodically, and the Inquisitor himself is
evidently filled with that intense self-consciousness which sustains
all martyrs in their supreme hour and makes them, it may be, insensible
to actual pain. One feels that this martyr will write his motto in the
dust with a firm hand. His whole comportment is quite exemplary. What
irony that he should be unobserved! Even we, posterity, think far less
of St. Peter than of Bellini when we see this picture; St. Peter is no
more to us than the blue harmony of those little hills beyond, or than
that little sparrow perched on a twig in the foreground. After all,
there have been so many martyrs--and so many martyrs named Peter--but
so few great painters. The little screed on the fence is no mere vain
anachronism. It is a sly, rather malicious symbol. PERIIT PETRUS:
BILLINUS FECIT, as who should say.

'L'OISEAU BLEU'

A PAINTING ON SILK BY CHARLES CONDER

Over them, ever over them, floats the Blue Bird; and they, the
ennuye'es and the ennuyants, the ennuyantes and the ennuye's, these
Parisians of 1830, are lolling in a charmed, charming circle, whilst
two of their order, the young Duc de Belhabit et Profil-Perdu with the
girl to whom he has but recently been married, move hither or thither
vaguely, their faces upturned, making vain efforts to lure down the
elusive creature. The haze of very early morning pervades the garden
which is the scene of their faint aspiration. One cannot see very
clearly there. The ladies' furbelows are blurred against the foliage,
and the lilac-bushes loom through the air as though they were white
clouds full of rain. One cannot see the ladies' faces very clearly. One
guesses them, though, to be supercilious and smiling, all with the
curved lips and the raised eyebrows of Experience. For, in their time,
all these ladies, and all their lovers with them, have tried to catch
this same Blue Bird, and have been full of hope that it would come
fluttering down to them at last. Now they are tired of trying, knowing
that to try were foolish and of no avail. Yet it is pleasant for them
to see, as here, others intent on the old pastime. Perhaps--who
knows?--some day the bird will be