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"Ha! ha! ha! --- ha! ha!
ha!" --- laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat as I entered the
room, and throwing himself back at full-length upon an ottoman. "I see,"
said he, perceiving that I could not immediately reconcile myself to the
bienseance of so singular a welcome --- "I see you are astonished at my
apartment --- at my statues --- my pictures --- my originality of conception
in architecture and upholstery!
absolutely drunk, eh, with my magnificence? But pardon me, my dear sir,
(here his tone of voice dropped to the very spirit of cordiality); pardon me for
my uncharitable laughter. You appeared so utterly astonished.
Besides, some things are so completely ludicrous, that a man must laugh
or die. To die laughing, must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths
! Sir Thomas More --- a very fine man was Sir Thomas More --- Sir Thomas More
died laughing, you remember. Also in the Absurdities of Ravisius
Textor, there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent
end. Do you know, however," continued he musingly, "that at Sparta (which
is now Palæochori,) at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among
a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle, upon which are
still legible the letters LASM. They are undoubtedly part
of GELASMA. Now, at Sparta were a thousand
temples and shrines to a thousand different divinities. How exceedingly
strange that the altar of Laughter should have survived all the others !
But in the present instance," he resumed, with a singular alteration of voice
and manner, "I have no right to be merry at your expense. You might well
have been amazed. Europe cannot produce anything so fine as this, my
little regal cabinet. My other apartments are by no means of the same
order --- mere ultras of fashionable insipidity. This is better than
fashion --- is it not? Yet this has but to be seen to become the rage ---
that is, with those who could afford it at the cost of their entire
patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one
exception, you are the only human being besides myself and my valet, who
has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since they
have been bedizened as you see!"
I bowed in acknowledgment --- for the overpowering sense of splendor and perfume, and music, together with the unexpected eccentricity of his address and manner, prevented me from expressing, in words, my appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment. "Here," he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered around the apartment, "here are paintings from the Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as you see, with little deference to the opinions of Virtu. They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here, too, are some chefs d'œuvre of the unknown great ; and here, unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me. What think you," said he, turning abruptly as he spoke --- "what think you of this Madonna della Pieta?" "It is Guido's own!" I said, with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I had been poring intently over its surpassing loveliness. "It is Guido's own! --- how could you have obtained it? --- she is undoubtedly in painting what the Venus is in sculpture." "Ha!" said he thoughtfully, "the Venus --- the beautiful Venus? --- the Venus of the Medici? --- she of the diminutive head and the gilded hair? Part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty), and all the right, are restorations; and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all affectation. Give me the Canova! The Apollo, too, is a copy --- there can be no doubt of it --- blind fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot help --- pity me! --- I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said that the statuary found his statue in the block of marble? Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet --- It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament and character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions --- intruding upon his moments of dalliance --- and interweaving itself with his very flashes of merriment --- like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis. I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation --- a degree of nervous unction in action and in speech --- an unquiet excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a visitor, or to sounds which must have had existence in his imagination alone. It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar Politian's beautiful tragedy "The Orfeo," (the first native Italian tragedy), which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third act --- a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement --- a passage which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion --- no woman without a sigh. The whole page was blotted with fresh tears ; and, upon the opposite interleaf, were the following English lines, written in a hand so very different from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in recognizing it as his own: --- Thou wast that all to me, love,
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