My Recollections Part 3

We were completely carried away by Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper." We found it in a large hall which the Austrian soldiers had used as a stable and they had cut a door--Horrors! Abomination of abominations!--in the central panel of the picture.

The masterpiece is gradually fading away. In time it will have entirely disappeared, but it is not like "La Giaconda" easier to carry away than the wall thirty feet high on which it is painted.

We went through Verona and made the obligatory pilgrimage to the tomb of Juliet, the beloved of Romeo. That excursion satisfies the inmost feelings of every young man in love with Love. Then Vienza, Padua, where, while I was looking at Giotto's paintings on the story of Christ, I had an intuition that Mary Magdalene would occupy my life some day, and then Venice!

Venice! One might have told me that I still lived although I would not have believed it, so unreal were the hours I pa.s.sed in that matchless city. As we had no Baedeker--his guide was too costly for us--it was only through a sort of divination that we discovered all the wonders of Venice without directions.

My companions admired a painting by Palma Vecchio in a church whose name they did not know. How was I to find it among the ninety churches in Venice? I got into my gondola alone and said to my "barcaiollo" that I was going to Saint Zacharie; but I did not find the picture, a Santa Barbara, so I had him take me to another saint. A new deception! As this kept repeating and threatened never to end, my gondolier laughingly showed me another church--All Saints--and said to me, mockingly, "Go in there; you'll surely find yours."

I pa.s.s over Pisa and Florence which I shall describe in detail later.

When we came near the Papal territory, we decided to add a picturesque touch to our journey and instead of entering Rome in the conventional way by Ponte-Moll, the ancient witness of the defeat of Maxentius and the glorification of Christianity, we took a steamer from Leghorn to Civitta Vecchia. It was the first sea voyage that I went through ...

almost decently, thanks to some oranges which I kept in my mouth all the time.

At last we reached Rome by the railroad from Civitta Vecchia to the Eternal City. It was the pensionnaires' dinner hour and they were nonplussed at seeing us, for we had deprived them of a holiday in going to meet our coach on the Flammian Way. Our welcome was spontaneous. A special dinner was hastily got together and this started the jokes practised on newcomers, who were called "_Les Affreux Nouveaux_."

As a musician I was instructed to go bell in hand to call dinner through the numerous walks of the Villa Medici, now plunged in darkness. As I did not know the way, I fell into a fountain. Naturally the bell stopped ringing and the boarders, who were listening to the sound and rejoicing in the fun, burst into hearty laughter at the sudden cessation of the noise. They understood what had happened and came to fish me out.

I had paid my first debt, the debt of entrance to the Villa Medici.

Night was to bring other trials.

The dining room of the pensionnaires, which I found so pleasant the next day, was transformed into a den of bandits. The servants, who ordinarily wore the green livery of the Emperor, were dressed as monks with short blunderbusses across their shoulders and with pistols in their belts.

Their false noses were modeled by a sculptor and were painted red. The pine table was stained with wine and covered with dirt.

Our seniors wore proud and haughty looks, but this did not prevent them, at a given signal, from telling us that while the food was simple, all lived in the most fraternal harmony. Suddenly, after a discussion of art which was carried on facetiously, there was a hub-bub and amid frightful shouts all the plates and bottles went flying through the air.

At a signal from one of the supposed monks there was instant silence and we heard the voice of the oldest pensionnaire, Henner, saying gravely, "Here all is harmony."

It was well that we knew we were the b.u.t.ts for jokes. I was a little embarra.s.sed. I did not dare to move, and I sat with my head down, staring at the table, where I read the name of Herold, the author of the _Pre aux Clercs_, cut with a knife when he was a pensionnaire at this same Villa Medici.

CHAPTER V

THE VILLA MEDICI

As I had foreseen and gathered from the meaning looks which the pensionnaires exchanged, another joke, the masterpiece of the hazing, was arranged for us. We had hardly left the table when the pensionnaires wrapped themselves in the huge capes that were fas.h.i.+onable in Rome at the time and obliged us, before we went to rest in the rooms a.s.signed to us, to take a const.i.tutional (Was it really necessary?) to the Forum, the ancient Forum which all our memories of school recalled to us.

We knew nothing of Rome by night, or by day for that matter, but we walked on surrounded by our new school fellows who acted as guides. It was a January night and very dark, and favorable for the schemes of our cicerones. When we got near the Capitol, we could scarcely distinguish the outlines of the temples in the hollows of the famous Campo Vaccino.

Their reproductions in the Louvre are still one of the masterpieces of Claude Lorrain.

In those days, under the rule of His Holiness Pope Pius IX, no official excavations had been begun even in the Forum. The famous place was only a heap of stones and shafts of columns buried in the weeds on which herds of goats browsed. These pretty creatures were watched over by goatherds in large hats and wrapped in great black cloaks with green linings, the ordinary costume of the peasant of the Roman campagna. They were armed with long pikes to drive off the wild cattle which splashed about in the Ostian marshes.

Our companions made us cross the ruins of the basilica of Constantine.

We could just make out the immense coffered vaults. Our admiration changed to fright when we found ourselves a moment later in a place entirely surrounded by walls of indescribably colossal proportions. In the middle of this place was a large cross on a pedestal formed by steps--a sort of Calvary. When I reached this point, I could no longer see my companions and on turning back I found that I was alone in the middle of the gigantic amphitheater of the Colosseum in a silence which seemed frightful to me.

I tried to find a way which would lead me back to the streets where some late but complacent pa.s.serby might direct me to the Villa Medici.

But my search was in vain. I was so exasperated by my fruitless attempts that I fell on one of the steps of the cross overcome by weariness. I cried like a child. It was quite excusable, for I was worn out with exhaustion.

Finally, daylight appeared. Its rays showed me that I had gone round and round like a squirrel in a cage and had come across nothing save the stairways to the upper tiers. When one thinks of the eighty tiers which in the time of Imperial Rome held a hundred thousand spectators, this round of mine could easily have been endless for me. But the sunrise was my salvation. After a few steps I was happy to see that, like Little Tom Thumb lost in the woods, I was following the path which would take me on the right road.

I reached the Villa Medici at last and took possession of the room which had been reserved for me. The window looked out on the Avenue du Pincio; my horizon was the whole of Rome and ended in the outlines of the dome of St. Peter's at the Vatican. The Director, M. Schnetz, a member of the Inst.i.tute, took me to my room. He was tall and he had willingly wrapped himself in a capacious dressing gown and had put on a Greek cap bedizened, like the gown, with magnificent gold ta.s.sels. M. Schnetz was the last of that generation of great painters which had a special reverence for the country about Rome. His studies and pictures were conceived in the midst of the Sabine brigands. His strong, determined appearance made his hosts in his adventurous wanderings respect and fear him. He was a perfect father to all the children of the Academie de France at Rome.

The bell for luncheon sounded. This time it was the real cook who rang it and not I who had been so kindly given the duty the evening before.

The dining room had taken on its comfortable every-day appearance. Our companions were positively affectionate. The servants were no longer the pseudo monks we had seen at the first meal. I learned that I had not been the only one to be hoaxed.

The Carnival festivities at Rome were just ending with their wild baccha.n.a.lian revelries. While they were not so famous as those of Venice, they had, nevertheless, just as much dash and life. Their setting was altogether different--more majestic if not more appropriate. We all partic.i.p.ated in a large car built by our architects and decorated by our sculptors. We spent the day in throwing confetti and flowers at all the lovely Roman girls, who replied with bewitching smiles from their palace balconies on the Corso. Surely when Michelet wrote his brilliant and poetic study _La Femme_, the sequel to his _L'Amour_, he must have had in his mind's eye, as we saw them in life, these types of rare, sparkling and fascinating beauty.

What changes have taken place in Rome since such careless freedom and gaiety were the usual thing! The superb Italian regiments march on this same Corso to-day, and the rows of shops for the most part belong to German shopkeepers.

Progress! How many are thy blows!

One day the Director told us that Hippolyte Flandrin, the famous leader of the religious movement in Nineteenth Century Art, had reached Rome the night before and wanted to meet the students.

I little thought that forty-six years later I should recall this visit in the speech I would deliver as president of the Inst.i.tute and the Academie des Beaux Arts.

In this speech I said:

"On the Pincio, opposite the Academie de France, is a small bubbling fountain shaped like an ancient vase, which, beneath a bower of green oaks, stands out against the horizon with its fine lines. There, when after thirty-two years he returned to Rome a great artist, Hippolyte Flandrin, before he entered the temple, dipped his fingers as in a holy font and crossed himself."

The sorrow stricken arts to which he had contributed so much went into mourning at almost the very moment we were getting ready to go to thank him officially for his consideration of us. He lived in the Piazza della Spagna, near the Villa Medici where he wanted to be. In the church of Santa Luigi della Francese we laid on his coffin wreaths of laurel from the garden of the Villa, which, as a student, he had loved so well. He was a comrade at the Villa of his beloved musician Ambroise Thomas, whom he saw for the last time at the height of his glory....

Some days later Falguiere, Chaplain and I started for Naples, by carriage as far as Palestrina, on foot to Terracina, at the southern end of the Pontian marshes, then again by carriage to Naples!...

CHAPTER VI

THE VILLA MEDICI

What never to be forgotten times they were for youthful artists, when we shared our enthusiasms for all we saw in these pleasantly picturesque villages--a picturesqueness which has certainly gone by now.

Our lodgings were in the most primitive inns. I remember that one night I was greatly disturbed by the feeling that my neighbor in the garret had set the miserable hovel on fire. Falguiere had the same idea too. It was only imagination. It was the bright starlight s.h.i.+ning through the dilapidated ceiling.

As we pa.s.sed through the woods of Subiacco, a shepherd's _zampogna_ (a sort of rustic bagpipe) sounded a burst of melody which I presently noted down on a bit of paper loaned me by a Benedictine monk in a neighboring monastery. These measures became the first notes of _Marie-Magdeleine_, the sacred drama which I was already planning for my first venture.

I still have the sketch Chaplain made of me at the moment.

As was the custom in the olden times of the pensionnaires of the Villa Medici, we lodged in Naples at the Casa Combi, an old house overlooking the Quay Santa Lucia. The fifth floor was reserved for us. It was an old ruin with a pink rough-cast front and windows framed in mouldings shaped in small figures and cleverly painted, like those one sees all over Italy as soon as one crosses the Var.

A vast room held our three beds. As for the dressing room and the rest, they were on the balcony, where, according to the local custom, we hung our clothes to dry.

In order to travel as comfortably as possible, we had rigged ourselves out at Rome with three suits of white flannel with blue stripes.