THE VILLA MEDICI
The winners of the Grand Prix de Rome for 1863 in painting, sculpture,
architecture, and engraving, were Layraud and Monchablon, Bourgeois,
Brune and Chaplain. Custom decreed--it still does--that we should all go
to the Villa Medici together and should visit Italy. What a changed and
ideal life mine now was! The Minister of Finance sent me six hundred
francs and a passport in the name of Napoleon III, signed by Drouyns de
Luys, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
I then met my new companions and we went to pay the formal calls on the
members of the Institute before our departure for the Academie de France
at Rome.
On the day after Christmas, in three open carriages, we started to pay
our official calls which took us into every quarter of Paris where our
patrons lived.
The three carriages, crowded with young men, real _rapins_, I had almost
said gamins, mad with success and intoxicated by thoughts of the
future, made a veritable scandal in the streets.
Nearly all the gentlemen of the Institute sent out word that they were
not at home--to avoid making a speech. M. Hirtoff, the famous architect,
who lived in the Rue Lamartine, put on less airs and shouted out to his
servant from his bedroom, "Tell them I'm not in."
I recall that of old the professors accompanied their pupils as far as
the starting place of the diligences in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires.
One day as the heavy diligence with the students packed on the rear--the
cheapest places which exposed them to all the dust of the road--was
about to start on the long journey from Paris to Rome, M. Couder, Louis
Philippe's favorite painter, was heard to say impressively to his
special pupil, "Above all don't forget my style." This was a
delightfully naive remark, but it was touching nevertheless. He was the
painter of whom the king said, after he had given him an order for the
museum at Versailles, "M. Couder pleases me. His drawing is correct; his
coloring satisfies, and he is not dear."
Oh, the good, simple times, when words meant what they seemed to and
admiration was just without that deifying bombast that is so readily
heaped on one to-day!
I broke the custom and went on alone after making arrangements to meet
my comrades on the road to Genoa where I would overtake them driving an
enormous coach drawn by five horses. My plans were first to stop at
Nice, where my father was buried, and then to go to embrace my mother
who was living at Bordighera. She had a modest villa in a pleasant
location in a forest of palms overlooking the sea. I spent New Year's
with my mother, the anniversary of my father's death, hours filled to
overflowing with tenderness. All too soon I had to leave her, for my
joyous comrades awaited me in their carriage on the road of the Italian
La Corniche. My tears turned to laughter. Such is youth!
Our first stop was at Loano about eight o'clock in the evening.
I have confessed that I was almost gay and this is true. Nevertheless I
was a prey to indefinite thoughts; I felt myself almost a man,
henceforth to be alone in life. I pondered over such thoughts, too
reasonable perhaps for my years, while Italy's blossoming mimosas, lemon
trees and myrtles threw around me their sweet disturbing odors. What a
pleasant contrast it was for me who until then had only known the sour
smell of the faubourgs of Paris, the trampled grass of their
fortifications, and the perfume--I mean perfume--of my beloved wings of
the stage.
We spent two days in Genoa visiting the Campo-Santo, the city's
cemetery, so rich in the finest marble monuments, reputed to be the most
beautiful in Italy. After that who can deny that self-esteem survives
after death?
Next I found myself one morning on the Place du Dome at Milan walking
with my companion Chaplain, the famous engraver of medallions, and later
my confrere at the Institute. We shared our enthusiasms before the
marvellous cathedral of white marble dedicated to the Virgin by that
terrible partisan leader Jean Galeas Visconti as a repentance for his
life. "In that epoch of faith the world covered itself with white
robes," thus spake Bossuet whose weighty eloquence comes back to me.
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 passed 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 pass 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 butts for jokes. I was a little
embarrassed. 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.