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Page 19
A few minutes later, when we had crossed the stone quadrangle and
mounted the stairs, and stood with our catalogue in the Salle Lacaze,
momma said that she wouldn't have missed it for anything. She sank
ecstatic upon a bench, and gave to every individual picture upon the
opposite wall the tribute of her intensest admiration. It was a pleasure
to see her enjoying herself so much; and poppa and I vainly tried to
keep up to her with the catalogue.
"Oh, why haven't we such things in Chicago!" she exclaimed, at which the
Senator checked her mildly.
"It's a mere question of time," said he. "It isn't reasonable to expect
Pre-Raphaelites in a new country. But give us three or four hundred
years, and we'll produce old masters which, if you ladies will excuse
the expression, will knock the spots out of the Middle Ages." Poppa is
such an optimist about Chicago.
The Senator went on in a strain of criticism of the pictures perfectly
moderate and kindly--nothing he wouldn't have said to the artists
themselves--until momma interrupted him. "Don't you think we might be
silent for a time, Alexander," she said.
Momma does call him Alexander sometimes. I didn't like to mention it
before, but it can't be concealed for ever. She says it's because Joshua
always costs her an effort, and every woman ought to have the right to
name her own husband.
"Let us offer to all this genius," she continued, indicating it, "the
tribute of sealing our lips."
The Senator will always oblige. "Mine are sealed, Augusta," he replied,
and so we sat in silence for the next ten minutes. But I could see by
his expression, in connection with the angle at which his hat was
tipped, that he was comparing the productions before him with the future
old masters of Chicago, and wishing it were possible to live long enough
to back Chicago.
"How they do sink in!" said momma at last. "How they sink into the
soul!"
"They do," replied the Senator. "I don't deny it. But I see by the
catalogue, counting Salles and Salons and all, there's seventeen rooms
full of them. If they're all to sink in, for my part I'll have to
enlarge the premises. And we've been here three-quarters of an hour
already, and life is short, Augusta."
So we moved on where the imperishable faces of Greuze and Velasquez and
Rembrandt smiled and frowned and wondered at us. As poppa said, it was
easy to see that these people had ideas, and were simply longing to
express them. "You feel sorry for them," he said, "just as you feel
sorry for an intelligent terrier. But these poor things can't even wag
their tails! Just let me know when you've had enough, Augusta."
Momma declared, with an accent of reproach, that she could never have
enough. I noticed, however, that we did not stay in the second room as
long as in the first one, and that our progress was steadily
accelerating. Presently the Senator asked us to sit down for a few
minutes while he should leave us.
"There's a picture here Bramley said I was to see without fail," he
explained. "It's called 'Mona Lisa,' and it's by an artist by the name
of Leonardo da Vinci. Bramley said it was a very fine painting, but I
don't remember just now whether he said it was what you might call a
picture for the family or not. I'll just go and ascertain," said the
Senator. "Judging from some of the specimens here, oil paintings in the
Middle Ages weren't intended to be chromo-lithographed."
In his absence momma and I discussed French cookery as far as we had
experienced it, in detail, with prodigious yawns for which we did not
even apologise. Poppa was gone a remarkably short time and came back
radiant. "I've found Mona," he exclaimed, "and--she's all right. Bramley
said it was the most remarkable portrait of a woman in the
world--looking at it, Bramley said, you become insensible to
everything--forget all about your past life and future hopes--and I
guess he's about right. Come and see it."
Momma arose without enthusiasm, and I thought I detected adverse
criticism in advance in her expression.
"Here she is," said the Senator presently. "Now look at that! Did you
ever see anything more intellectual and cynical, and contemptuous and
sweet, all in one! Lookin' at you as much as to say, 'Who are you,
anyhow, from way back in the State of Illinois--commercial traveller?
And what do you pretend to know?'"
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