ns of Paris and London can possibly last a
hundred years. I recently visited that Palace of Art, the South
Kensington Museum, in London, and saw there a large fresco by Sir
Frederick Leighton. It had just been completed, I was informed. It was
already fading! Within a few years it will be a blur of indistinct
outlines. I compared its condition with the cartoons of Raphael, and a
superb Giorgione in the same building; these were as warm and bright as
though recently painted. It is not Leighton's fault that his works are
doomed to perish as completely off the canvas as though he had never
traced them; it is his dire misfortune, and that of every other
nineteenth-century painter, thanks to the magnificent institution of
free trade, which has resulted in a vulgar competition of all countries
and all classes to see which can most quickly jostle the other out of
existence. But I am wearying you, mademoiselle--pardon me! To resume my
own story. As I told you, I could think of nothing but the one subject
of Colour; it haunted me incessantly. I saw in my dreams visions, of
exquisite forms and faces that I longed to transfer to my canvas, but I
could never succeed in the attempt. My hand seemed to have lost all
skill. About this time my father died, and I, having no other relation
in the world, and no ties of home to cling to, lived in utter solitude,
and tortured my brain more and more with the one question that baffled
and perplexed me. I became moody and irritable; I avoided intercourse
with everyone, and at last sleep forsook my eyes. Then came a terrible
season of feverish trouble, nervous dejection and despair. At times I
would sit silently brooding; at others I started up and walked rapidly
for hours, in the hope to calm the wild unrest that took possession of
my brain. I was then living in Rome, in the studio that had been my
father's. One evening--how well I remember it!--I was attacked by one
of those fierce impulses that forbade me to rest or think or sleep,
and, as usual, I hurried out for one of those long aimless excursions I
had latterly grown accustomed to. At the open street-door stood the
proprietress of the house, a stout, good-natured contadina, with her
youngest child Pippa holding to her skirt. As she saw me approaching,
she started back with an exclamation of alarm, and catching the little
girl up in her arms, she made the sign of the cross rapidly. Astonished
at this, I paused in my hasty walk, and said with