The Madonna of the Future | Page 4

base, in its projected shadow, gleamed certain dim
sculptures which I wonderingly approached. One of the images, on the
left of the palace door, was a magnificent colossus, shining through the
dusky air like a sentinel who has taken the alarm. In a moment I
recognised him as Michael Angelo's David. I turned with a certain
relief from his sinister strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed
beneath the high light loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span
of its arches to the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely
shapely and graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his
light nervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name
is Perseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but
in the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine
fellows to the other, I probably uttered some irrepressible
commonplace of praise, for, as if provoked by my voice, a man rose
from the steps of the loggia, where he had been sitting in the shadow,
and addressed me in good English--a small, slim personage, clad in a
sort of black velvet tunic (as it seemed), and with a mass of auburn hair,
which gleamed in the moonlight, escaping from a little mediaeval
birretta. In a tone of the most insinuating deference he asked me for my
"impressions." He seemed picturesque, fantastic, slightly unreal.
Hovering there in this consecrated neighbourhood, he might have
passed for the genius of aesthetic hospitality--if the genius of aesthetic
hospitality were not commonly some shabby little custode, flourishing
a calico pocket-handkerchief and openly resentful of the divided franc.
This analogy was made none the less complete by the brilliant tirade
with which he greeted my embarrassed silence.
"I have known Florence long, sir, but I have never known her so lovely
as tonight. It's as if the ghosts of her past were abroad in the empty
streets. The present is sleeping; the past hovers about us like a dream

made visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling up in couples to pass
judgment on the last performance of Michael, of Benvenuto! We
should come in for a precious lesson if we might overhear what they
say. The plainest burgher of them, in his cap and gown, had a taste in
the matter! That was the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven,
and his broad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the
dullest eyes clear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray
dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom,
holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing
nothing but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of
illumination are gone! But do you know I fancy--I fancy"--and he grew
suddenly almost familiar in this visionary fervour--"I fancy the light of
that time rests upon us here for an hour! I have never seen the David so
grand, the Perseus so fair! Even the inferior productions of John of
Bologna and of Baccio Bandinelli seem to realise the artist's dream. I
feel as if the moonlit air were charged with the secrets of the masters,
and as if, standing here in religious attention, we might--we might
witness a revelation!" Perceiving at this moment, I suppose, my halting
comprehension reflected in my puzzled face, this interesting rhapsodist
paused and blushed. Then with a melancholy smile, "You think me a
moonstruck charlatan, I suppose. It's not my habit to bang about the
piazza and pounce upon innocent tourists. But tonight, I confess, I am
under the charm. And then, somehow, I fancied you too were an artist!"
"I am not an artist, I am sorry to say, as you must understand the term.
But pray make no apologies. I am also under the charm; your eloquent
remarks have only deepened it."
"If you are not an artist you are worthy to be one!" he rejoined, with an
expressive smile. "A young man who arrives at Florence late in the
evening, and, instead of going prosaically to bed, or hanging over the
traveller's book at his hotel, walks forth without loss of time to pay his
devoirs to the beautiful, is a young man after my own heart!"
The mystery was suddenly solved; my friend was an American! He
must have been, to take the picturesque so prodigiously to heart. "None
the less so, I trust," I answered, "if the young man is a sordid New
Yorker."
"New Yorkers have been munificent patrons of art!" he answered,
urbanely.

For a moment I was alarmed. Was this midnight reverie mere Yankee
enterprise, and was he simply a desperate brother of the brush who had
posted himself here to