(CONTINUED.)
[Illustration]
Let me collect my scattered senses! Where am I? In Pitti Palace. On
narrow staircase. Probably on forbidden ground. I hear footfall--
descending. Perhaps it may be one of the officials, and I shall be
caught in the act of attempting to enter the royal attics! What would
be the punishment? Death, or penal servitude? The gallows or the
galleys? Have happily several one-lira notes in my pocket. If these are
not sufficient, five lire, or even ten----But I shall see what sort of
man he is. Perhaps a few coppers would be enough. At this moment the
obstruction descends, and I discover that he is a fat German tourist.
For the first time in my life am pleased to look at a German, though
the cut of this one's clothes is even worse than usual. Feel inclined
to fall upon his neck and murmur "_Mahlzeit!_" or "_Prosit!_" or some
other idiotic exclamation peculiar to his country. Fortunately,
remember that these are only said in connection with eating or
drinking. Perhaps, if I were to remind him of drink, after he has spent
hours in a dry, hot gallery, it would not tend to conciliate him.
Therefore muster up the half-dozen words of his awful language which
years of anxious study have enabled me to master in all their
complexities of gender, number, case, declension, conjugation,
agreement, government, &c.--not forgetting the exceptions--and, taking
off my hat, ask him if this is the entrance to the galleries. "_Ja
wohl_," says he. And moreover if I go up these stairs to the top. "_Ja
wohl_," says he again. Emboldened by his courteous affability, I remark
that the staircase is very narrow. "_Ja wohl_," says he, for the third
time, and passes on. A very interesting conversation with an
intelligent foreigner in a country where we are both strangers. There
is nothing like travel to enlarge the mind. Besides, one learns so much
of foreign languages when one hears the varied idioms and phrases of
the natives.
Thus meditating I arrive at the top of the ladder. What a smell of
paint! They are evidently doing up the palace. Turn along a passage
about two feet wide--how that German got through it has puzzled me ever
since--and find myself in a magnificent studio, filled with painters,
easels, palettes and canvases, and with the smell of paint. That German
deceived me. I have come to the wrong place after all. Am just about to
apologise and retreat when I perceived a fine old master on the wall.
Peeping amongst the painters, easels, palettes, and canvases, perceive
other old masters, almost entirely hidden by the various erections of
the students. At this moment an official rings a small bell. Ask him if
I may be permitted to look at some of the pictures on the walls, if it
would not be interfering with the painters. "Certainly, _signore_,"
says he. And ask him where the Pitti Gallery is. "It is here," says he.
What? I have reached it at last! But how can one see anything when the
whole place is choked up with these execrable modern copies and the
apparatus to support them? However, I will see what I can now that I
have got here. Happily the daylight will last for at least another
hour. "But," continues the official, as I meditate, "it is now four
o'clock. The gallery is closed."