was getting
on very slowly, she was bound to overtake me. You may be sure I took no
steps to prevent it, and so in a very short time we were both standing
before the same picture, a portrait of Holbein the younger. A subject of
conversation was ready to hand.

"Mademoiselle," said I, "do you like this Holbein?"

"You must admit, sir, that the old gentleman is exceedingly plain."

"Yes, but the painting is exquisite. See how powerful is the drawing of
the head, how clear and deep the colors remain after more than three
hundred years. What a good likeness it must have been! The subject tells
his own story: he must have been a nobleman of the court of Henry VIII, a
Protestant in favor with the King, wily but illiterate, and wishing from
the bottom of his heart that he were back with the companions of his
youth at home in his country house, hunting and drinking at his ease. It
is really the study of a man's character. Look at this Rubens beside it,
a mere mass of flesh scarcely held together by a spirit, a style that is
exuberantly material, all color and no expression. Here you have
spirituality on one side and materialism on the other, unconscious,
perhaps, but unmistakable. Compare, again, with these two pictures this
little drawing, doubtless by Perugino, just a sketch of an angel for an
Annunciation; notice the purity of outline, the ideal atmosphere in which
the painter lives and with which he impregnates his work. You see he
comes of a school of poets and mystics, gifted with a second sight which
enabled them to beautify this world and raise themselves above it."

I was pleased with my little lecture, and so was Jeanne. I could tell it
by her surprised expression, and by the looks she cast toward her father,
who was still taking notes, to see whether she might go on with her first
lesson in art.

He smiled in a friendly way, which meant:

"I'm happy here, my dear, thank you; 'va piano va sano'."

This was as good as permission. We went on our way, saluting, as we
passed, Tintoretto and Titian, Veronese and Andrea Solari, old Cimabue,
and a few early paintings of angular virgins on golden backgrounds.

Jeanne was no longer bored.

"And is this," she would say, "another Venetian, or a Lombard, or a
Florentine?"

We soon completed the round of the first room, and made our way into the
gallery beyond, devoted to sculpture. The marble gods and goddesses, the
lovely fragments of frieze or cornice from the excav