'J-im! I don't see but what we-we-'ll have to r-r-roost out-tall night. I don't know 'ny 'talian, you don't know 'ny 'talian, we-we-'re nonpl'sh'd, I'm th-think'ng.'
'Ary borry boutére spikinglish?' said the other one to the two artists, as they were walking on.
'Yes,' said Caper, 'four of 'em. If you've lost your way we'll set you right. Where's your hotel?'
''Tel? Why, 'Tel Europe p'aza Spanya. Are you English?'
'No, sir! I'm an American born, bred andbuttered,' said Caper.
'B-bullyf'ryou! We'resame spishiesallrited-driv'on!'
'Look here,' said the one of the two men who was least tipsy, 'if this tother g-gen'leman and I could stick our heads into c-cold water we'd come out tall right.'
'It's only a block or two back to the Trevi fountain,' answered Caper, 'and if your friend will go with you, you'll find water enough there.'
They went back to the fountain, and descending the steps with some difficulty, the two men soon had their heads pretty well cooled off, and came up with cleared intellects and improved pronunciation. In the course of conversation it appeared that the two travelers, for such they were, after rather too much wine at dinner in their hotel, had been invited to the German Club, where Rhine wine, etc., had finished them off: attempting to return to their hotel alone, they had lost their way. As the four walked along, it came out that one of them owned a painting by Rocjean, and when he discovered that one of his guides was no other than that Americanized Frenchman, the whole party at once fraternized, and disregarding any more moonlight effects, walked at once to Caper's rooms, where over cigars and a bottle of Copalti's wine they signed, sealed, and delivered a compact to have a good time generally for the week the two travelers intended devoting to Rome. The moral of which is that you make more friends than meet enemieswalking round Rome by night.
THE MYSTERIOUS IN ART
They were in the presence of a man with flowing hair, flowing beard, and flowing language, in a studio, all light from which was excluded by heavy curtains, except enough to display an easel on which was placed a painting, a background of dark blue where were many apparently spider and crow-tracks.
'Those who in the profundity of their darkness incline to the belief that the vitality of art, butterfly-like, has fled from this sunny world, have made the biggest kind of a mistake,' said Mr. Artaxerxes Phlamm, the Mystic Artist, to Caper. The hit was evidently intended for Rocjean, but that descendant of the Gauls, for some reason, did not smite back again; he contented himself with the remark:
'Art is long.'
'Yes, sir,' continued Mr. Phlamm, 'not only it has length, but breadth, breadth, broadnessit extends fromyesfrompole to pole.'
'Like a clothes-line,' said Caper.
'Ah!' continued Phlamm, with a pickled smile, 'Fancy, ever Fancy, but it is Imagination that, as it were, brings man to a level with his destiny and elevates him to the Olympium hights of the True, and all that rises much above the meedyochre. But I must not forget that this is your first visit to me studeeyoh. The painting on the easel is a view of Venice on the Grand Canal.'
'But,' said Rocjean, 'I do not see the canal.'
'When you are gazing at the stars do you see your boots?' asked Phlamm.
'I always do,' spoke Caper quickly, 'always gaze at 'em at nightsmoke a cigarput my feet higher than my headsit in a chairstars reflected in bootsbig thing!'
'You are full of life and spirits, Caper,' continued Phlamm, 'full of 'em; but Rocjean is more serious, more imbued with his nobil calling. My illustration, as he understands, would convey the idea that such a thing as foreground in a painting is false; it's a sham, it's a delusion, and all that. It may do for pre-Raffleites, but for a man who looks Naychure in the face, he sees her operating diversely, and he works according. I repeat it again, when I was on the Grand Canal in Venice, I didn't see the Grand Canal.'
'Neither did I,' spoke Caper, 'we're just alike; I kept my head all the time out of the gondola-window looking for pretty girlsand I saw them!'
'May I ask why you dead-color your canvas blue, and then make your drawing in black outline?' asked Rocjean.
'What is the color of the sky? Is it not blue? Is not blue a cold color; is it not the negative to the warmth, the balance to the scales, the one thing needed on which to rear the glorious fabric that Naychure reveals to the undimmed vision of man? I know your answer, and I refute it. I have studied Art from its roots, and now I'm in the branches, and I grasp the fruit. My manner is peculiarI have no patent for itI ask for none. The illimitable passes the legitimate, and the sw-word is carried by the herofor me the bruzh, the paint-bruzh. You see that painting before youit is my childI lavish on it my intentionsI am going to work three years on that picture!'
'I bet you a new hat you sell it, and a dozen more, and send 'em off before six months. You're all the rage now since you sold old Goldburg a picture,' quoth Caper.
'I don't bet, I am opposed to betting. But look that picture of mine in the face, in the face! Here is a finished painting, The Lake of Zurich; see those clouds floating mistily away into the far distancethere's atmosphere for youthere's air! You can't cut those clouds into slices of cheese as you can them of that humbug of a Cloud Lowrain. Cloud Lowrain! he's a purty painter! Naychure is my teacher. I go out mornings and hear the jackdaws chatter, and see trees and all that; sometimes I walk around in a garden for ten minutes and commune with Naychurethat's the way to do it. Look at clouds before you paint 'emI know it's hard when the sun's in your eyes, but do itI've spent a week at a time out-doors, like Wordsworth and the great, the grand, the colossial Ruzking.'
'I like that water,' said Rocjean, alluding to that of the painting.
'Water is my peculiar study; I am now engaged experimenting on itsee there!' Here Phlamm pointed to a basin.
'Been washing your hands?' asked Caper.
'Scientifically experimenting, not manually. Water is soup-or-fish-allearth is not soup-or-fish-all.'
'Our dinners are, during Lent,' quoth Caper, 'unless we're heretics.'
'I don't understand your frivolitywhat do you mean?'
'Didn't you say, 'Soup or all fish?''
'Pshaw! You will never make an artistnever, neveryou are too, too superficiall, too much of the earth, dirty.'
'Oh! now I understand,' answered Caper; 'give it to me, I deserve it.'
'I was studying water, its shadows and its superficiality, in that basin,' continued Phlamm, 'and I study the ocean there, and have devolved great principles from it. What makes my pictures sought for by the high and the low, wealthy? What? It's the Truth in 'em, the Mystery, the Naychure. The old masters were humbugs, they weren't mysterious, they had no inner sight into the workings of Naychure. Who'd buy one of their pictures when he might have a Turner for the same price? Nobody.'
'Wouldn't he?' asked Caper. 'Try him with a Raphael, just a small one.'
'Raphael? You mean Raffaele. Ah! he was a painter, he wasn't one of the old masters, however, he was a middle-age master. What sweetness, what a kind ofsweetness generally; what a blending of the prayerful infant with the enthusiastic beauty; thethe polished chastity of his Mad-donas; the folds of his drapery, andthe drapery of his folds. Truly enchanting, and so very uncommonly gentlemanly in his colors.'
'The Chesterfield of oil-colors?' suggested Rocjean. 'But à propos of Nature, you never paint a picture directly from her, do you?'