an eminently characteristic conception of curious murder.
What amplitude of outline; what severe grace of drapery!
And what mad affectation of attention to the ghastly
baggage she is preparing for her flight! I can
only instance for a parallel the pitiful case of the
young Ophelia, decked with flowers and weeds, and
faltering in her pretty treble songs about lechery
and dead bodies. It needs strong men to do these
things; men who have lived out all that the world can
offer them of heaven and hell, and, with the tolerance
of maturity, are in the mind to see something worth
a thought in either. There is in murder something
more horrible than blood,—the spirit that
breeds blood and plays with it. M. Jan van Beers
and his kindred of the dissecting-room and accidents’-ward
are passed by Mantegna, who gives no vulgar illusion
of gaping wounds and jetting blood; but, instead,
holds up to us a beautiful woman daintily fingering
a corpse.
QUATTROCENTISTERIA
(How Sandro Botticelli saw Simonetta in the Spring)
Up at Fiesole, among the olives and chestnuts which
cloud the steeps, the magnificent Lorenzo was entertaining
his guests on a morning in April. The olives
were just whitening to silver; they stretched in a
trembling sea down the slope. Beyond lay Florence,
misty and golden; and round about were the mossy hills,
cut sharp and definite against a grey-blue sky, printed
with starry buildings and sober ranks of cypress.
The sun catching the mosaics of San Miniato and the
brazen cross on the fagade, made them shine like sword-blades
in the quiver of the heat between. For the valley
was just a lake of hot air, hot and murky—“fever
weather,” said the people in the streets—with
a glaring summer sun let in between two long spells
of fog. ’Twas unnatural at that season,
via; but the blessed Saints sent the weather
and one could only be careful what one was about at
sundown.
Up at the villa, with brisk morning airs rustling
overhead, in the cool shades of trees and lawns, it
was pleasant to lie still, watching these things,
while a silky young exquisite sang to his lute a not
too audacious ballad about Selvaggia, or Becchina
and the saucy Prior of Sant’ Onofrio. He
sang well too, that dark-eyed boy; the girl at whose
feet he was crouched was laughing and blushing at
once; and, being very fair, she blushed hotly.
She dared not raise her eyes to look into his, and
he knew it and was quietly measuring his strength—it
was quite a comedy! At each wanton refrain
he lowered his voice to a whisper and bent a little
forward. And the girl’s laughter became
hysterical; she was shaking with the effort to control
herself. At last she looked up with a sort of
sob in her breath and saw his mocking smile and the
gleam of the wild beast in his eyes. She grew
white, rose hastily and turned away to join a group
of ladies sitting apart. A man with a heavy,
rather sullen face and a bush of yellow hair falling
over his forehead in a wave, was standing aside watching
all this. He folded his arms and scowled under
his big brows; and when the girl moved away his eyes
followed her.
