pleasure! This sun which swims daily
through the firmament is but a painted phantasm compared with the
eternal rock of Christ's Love."

"Thy words are tinkling cymbals to me, Ser Giuseppe."

"They are those of thy faith, Signora."

"Nay, not of my faith," she cried vehemently. "Thou knowest I am no
Christian at heart. Nay, nor are any of our house, though they
perceive it not. My father fasts at Lent, but it is the Pagan
Aristotle that nourishes his thought. Rome counts her beads and
mumbles her paternosters, but she has outgrown the primitive faith in
Renunciation. Our pageants and processions, our splendid feasts, our
gorgeous costumes, what have these to do with the pale Christ, whom
thou wouldst foolishly emulate?"

"Then there is work for me to do, even among the Christians," he said
mildly.

"Nay, it is but mischief thou wouldst do, with thy passionless ghost
of a creed. It is the artists who have brought back joy to the world,
who have perceived the soul of beauty in all things. And though they
have feigned to paint the Holy Family and the Crucifixion and the Dead
Christ and the Last Supper, it is the loveliness of life that has
inspired their art. Yea, even from the prayerful Giotto downwards, it
is the pride of life, it is the glory of the human form, it is the joy
of color, it is the dignity of man, it is the adoration of the Muses.
Ay, and have not our nobles had themselves painted as Apostles, have
they not intruded their faces into sacred scenes, have they not
understood for what this religious art was a pretext? Is not Rome full
of Pagan art? Were not the Laocoon and the Cleopatra and the Venus
placed in the very orange garden of the Vatican?"

"Natheless it is the Madonna and the Child that your painters have
loved best to paint."

"'Tis but Venus and Cupid over again."

"Nay, these sneers belie the noble Signora de' Franchi. Thou canst not
be blind to the divine aspiration that lay behind a Madonna of Sandro
Botticelli."

"Thou hast not seen his frescoes in the Villa Lemmi, outside Firenze,
the dainty grace of his forms, the charming color, else thou wouldst
understand that it was not spiritual beauty alone that his soul
coveted."

"But Raffaello da Urbino, but Leonardo--"

"Leonardo," she repeated. "Hast thou seen his Bacchus, or his
battle-fresco? Knowest thou the later work of Raffaello? And what
sayest thou to our Fra Lippo Lippi? A Christian monk he, forsooth!
What sayest thou to Gio