Marco it seemed that he knew everything in the world.
They were not rich enough to buy many books, but Loristan knew the
treasures of all great cities, the resources of the smallest towns.
Together he and his boy walked through the endless galleries filled
with the wonders of the world, the pictures before which through
centuries an unbroken procession of almost worshiping eyes had passed
uplifted. Because his father made the pictures seem the glowing,
burning work of still-living men whom the centuries could not turn to
dust, because he could tell the stories of their living and laboring to
triumph, stories of what they felt and suffered and were, the boy
became as familiar with the old masters--Italian, German, French,
Dutch, English, Spanish--as he was with most of the countries they had
lived in. They were not merely old masters to him, but men who were
great, men who seemed to him to have wielded beautiful swords and held
high, splendid lights. His father could not go often with him, but he
always took him for the first time to the galleries, museums,
libraries, and historical places which were richest in treasures of
art, beauty, or story. Then, having seen them once through his eyes,
Marco went again and again alone, and so grew intimate with the wonders
of the world. He knew that he was gratifying a wish of his father's
when he tried to train himself to observe all things and forget
nothing. These palaces of marvels were his school-rooms, and his
strange but rich education was the most interesting part of his life.
In time, he knew exactly the places where the great Rembrandts,
Vandykes, Rubens, Raphaels, Tintorettos, or Frans Hals hung; he knew
whether this masterpiece or that was in Vienna, in Paris, in Venice, or
Munich, or Rome. He knew stories of splendid crown jewels, of old
armor, of ancient crafts, and of Roman relics dug up from beneath the
foundations of old German cities. Any boy wandering to amuse himself
through museums and palaces on "free days" could see what he saw, but
boys living fuller and less lonely lives would have been less likely to
concentrate their entire minds on what they looked at, and also less
likely to store away facts with the determination to be able to recall
at any moment the mental shelf on which they were laid. Having no
playmates and nothing to play with, he began when he was a very little
fellow to make a sort of game out of his rambles through
picture-galleries, a