|Hiram,' Audouin said, as soon as Sam and Colin had left the hotel,
'it's time for us, I surmise, to be setting about the same errand.
Before we begin to look at the sights of Rome, we must arrange where you
ought to locate yourself, and when you ought to commence your artistic
studies.
Hiram looked blankly enough out of the window into the dusty piazza, and
answered in a tone of some regret, 'Well, Mr. Audouin, if you think
so, I suppose it'll be best to do it, though I can't say I'm in any
particular hurry. Where do you contemplate making inquiries?'
'Why,' Audouin replied in his easy confident fashion, 'there's only one
really great painter now in Rome in whose studio I should like to put
you, Hiram, and that's Seguin.' Hiram's face sank. 'Seguin,' he echoed
somewhat gloomily. 'Ah, Seguin! But he's a figure painter, isn't he,
surely, Mr. Audouin?' Audouin smiled his pleasant smile of superior
wisdom. 'Well, Hiram,' he said, 'you don't come to Rome to paint
Chattawauga Lake, do you? Yes, Seguin's a figure painter. And you'll be
a figure painter, too, my dear fellow, before you've finished--yes, and
a great one. Seguin's one of the finest living artists, you know, in
all Europe. It's a great honour to be admitted into the studio of such a
master.'
If somebody in authority had said to Hiram Winthrop, 'You must go to
Seguin's and paint heroic figure pictures, or have your head cut off,'
Hiram Winthrop would no doubt have promptly responded with dogged
cheerfulness, 'A sainte guillotine, done,' or words to that effect,
without a moment's hesitation. But when Lothrop Audouin, his guide and
benefactor, said to him in a voice of friendly sympathy, 'You'll be a
figure painter too, before you've finished, Hiram,' he no more dreamt of
refusing or doubting (save in his own inmost soul) than a docile child
dreams of resisting its parents in the matter of their choice of
its school or its lessons. So he took his hat down from its peg, and
followed Audouin blindly, out into that labyrinth of dirty lanes and
ill-paved alleys which constitutes the genuine Rome of the native-born
modern Romans.
Audouin led the way, through the modernised shops and gay bustle of the
Corso, to a small side street, with squalid blotchy houses rising high
against the sky on either hand, and a crowd of dirty ragged children
loitering in the gutter, save when an occasional rickety carriage, drawn
by a tottering skinny horse, dashed round the dark corners with a sudden
swoop, and scattered them right and left with loud chattering cries into
the gloomy archways. All was new and strange to Hiram, and, if the truth
must be told, not particularly inviting. Past the Spaccio di Vino, the
squalid temple of Dionysus, where grimy Romans in grubby coatsleeves sat
drinking sour red wine from ill-washed tumblers; past the tinker's shop,
where some squat Etruscan figure crouched by a charcoal stove hammering
hopelessly at dilapidated pannikins; past the foul greengrocery, where
straw-covered flasks of rancid oil hung up untemptingly between long
strings of flabby greens and mouldering balls of country cheese; past
many other sights and sounds, dimly visible to Hiram's eyes or audible
to his ears in the whirl and confusion of an unknown city; till at last
Audouin wheeled round the corner into the Via Colonna (where Colin had
gone before), and stopped in front of a large and decently clean house,
bearing on the lintel of its great oak door a little painted tin plate,
'Atelier de M. J.-B. Seguin.' Audouin turned with a smile to Hiram,
poor dazzled, half-terrified Hiram, and said in a tone of some little
triumph, 'There, you see, Hiram, here we are at last; in Rome, and at
the great man's studio!'
And was this Rome! And was this the end of all his eager youthful
aspirations! Hiram had hardly the courage to smile back in his friend's
face, and assume an air of pretended cheerfulness. Already he felt in
his heart that this great, squalid, sordid city was really no place
for such as him. He knew he would never like it; he knew he could
never succeed in it. England, beautiful, smiling England, had quite
unaffectedly charmed and delighted him. There, he could find a thousand
subjects ready to his hand that would exactly suit his taste and temper.
It was so rich in verdure and tillage; it was so pregnant with the
literary and historical interests that were nearest and dearest to him.
But Rome! the very first glimpse of it was to Hiram Winthrop a
hideous disillusionment. Its dirt, its mouldiness, its gloom, its very
antiquity--nay, in one word, to be quite frank, its picturesqueness
itself, were all to his candid American soul unendurably ugly. He hated
it from top to bottom at first sight with a deadly hatred; and he felt
quite sure he should hate it cordially as long as he lived in it.
Very Philistine, of course, this feeling of dissatisfaction on Hiram
Winthrop's part; but then, you know, the Americans are a nation of
Philistines, and after all, no man can rise wholly superior to the
influence of his lifelong social environment. Indeed, it isn't easy
even for an Englishman to take kindly just at first to the dirt and
discomfort of southern European cities. He may put the best face upon
the matter that he can; he may sedulously and successfully disguise his
disgust lest he be accounted vulgar, narrowminded, insular, inartistic;
he may pretend to be charmed with everything, from St. Peter's to the
garlic in the cookery; yet in his heart of hearts he feels distinctly
that the Vatican barely outweighs the smells of the Ghetto, and that the
Colosseum scantily atones for the filthy alleys of the Tiberside slums
that cover what was once the Campus Martius. It takes some residence
to get over the initial disadvantages of an Italian city. But to an
American-born, an unregenerate, not yet cosmopolitanised or Italianate
American, fresh from the broad clean streets and neat white houses of
American cities, the squalor and griminess of Rome is a thing incredible
and almost unutterable. Hiram gazed at it, appalled and awestruck,
wondering how on earth he could ever manage to live for a year or two
together in that all-pervading murky atmosphere of dust-laden malaria.
Besides, was he not a little sore and disappointed that Gwen had seen
him, and had utterly forgotten him? Was he not just a trifle jealous,
not only of Audouin, but also of Colin Churchill? All these things go
to colour a man's opinion of towns and places quite as much as those
recognised and potent refractive agents, the nature of his digestion or
the state of the weather.
They were duly ushered up into M. Seguin's private room, and there the
great painter, after a few minutes' delay, came to see them. He was
a short, dry-looking, weazened-up little man, with a grizzled French
moustache waxed at the ends, and an imperturbable air of being
remarkably well pleased with himself, both physically and mentally.
Audouin took him in hand at once, as if by agreement, and did all the
talking, while Hiram stood silent and confused quite in the background.
Indeed, a casual observer might easily have imagined that it was Audouin
who wished to be the Frenchman's pupil, and that Hiram Winthrop was
merely there as a disinterested and unconcerned bystander.
'Has Monsieur got any specimens of his work with him?' M. Seguin asked
Hiram at last condescendingly. 'Anything on which one might form a
provisional judgment of his probable talents?'
'I've brought a few landscapes with me from America, if you would care
to see them,' Hiram answered submissively.
'To see them! Not at all, Monsieur. Do I wish to look at landscapes for
my part? Far from it! Let us admit that you do not come here to me to
learn landscape. The human figure--the divine human figure in all its
sublime grandeur--there, Monsieur, is the goal of the highest art;
there is the arena of the highest artist.' M. Seguin brought his hand
carelessly down upon the fragment of ribbon on his own left breast as
he finished this final sentence, as though to imply with due delicacy of
feeling that he considered the highest artist and Jean Baptiste Seguin
as practically convertible expressions.
Hiram inclined his head a little, partly to hide a smile. 'I'm afraid,
Monsieur,' he said humbly, 'I have nothing to show you in the way of
figure painting.'
'Well, well,' Seguin answered with a polite expansion of his two hands,
'give yourself the trouble to come here to-morrow morning and prepare to
copy a head of mine for the Salon of last year. You have seen it?--no?
then this way, Messieurs, '_I will show it to you!'_
The tone of exalted condescension in which he uttered those four words,
'Je vous la montrerai,' was as though he meant to afford them a glorious
treat which would render them for ever after perfectly happy.
Hiram and Audouin followed the weazened-up little man into another
room, where on an easel in the light stood his great Salon painting of
Sardanapalus and the Egyptian Princess. As in everything that Seguin has
painted, there was undoubtedly a certain meretricious beauty and force
about it. The technique, indeed, was in its way absolutely perfect. The
flesh tones had a satiny transparency; the draperies were arranged with
exquisite skill and supreme knowledge; the touch was everywhere firm
and solid: the art displayed was throughout consummate. Even the figures
themselves, viewed as representing their historical namesakes, were not
lacking in a certain theatrical grace and dignity.
Hiram felt instinctively that Sardanapalus was the masterpiece of a
great artist, who had a marvellous hand and a profound knowledge of
painting, but no soul in him; and _even_ Audouin recognised at once that
though the workmanship was as nearly perfect as the deepest study and
the finest eye could possibly make it, yet there was a something
still more profoundly artistic that was evidently wanting to the first
conception of Seguin's masterpiece.
M. Seguin himself stood still for a minute or two with his hand on
his hip, lips half parted and eye entranced, as though absorbed in
contemplation of his own great work of art, and then glanced round
sideways quite accidentally to see how its beauty affected the minds
of the two strangers. Having furtively satisfied himself that Hiram was
just then really appreciative of the clever light that fell obliquely
upon Sardanapalus's dusky shoulder, and that Audouin was duly admiring
the exquisitely painted full round arm of the Egyptian Princess, he
turned to them in front once more, like one recalled from the realms
of divine art to the worky-day world of actuality, and resumed the
discussion of their present business.
'You will come then, to-morrow, Monsieur, and do me a study of the head
of Sardanapalus. If by the time you have finished it, you display a
talent worthy of being evoked, I will then accept you as one of my
pupils. If not--which I do not, for the rest, anticipate--you will
understand, Monsieur, in that case, that it will be with the greatest
regret that I shall be compeled--ah, good; you recognise the necessity
laid upon an artist.--Antoine! These gentlemen--my time, the time of an
artist, is very precious. Good day, Monsieur, good day to you.'
'And if he accepts you, Hiram,' Audouin said, when they got outside,
'you'd better arrange to take an apartment somewhere with young
Churchill--furnished apartments suitable for art-students are cheap at
Rome, they tell me--and get your meals at a trattoria. That'll make your
money go farther, I estimate.'.
Hiram sighed, and almost wished in his own heart that M. Seguin would
have the kindness not to recognise in him a talent worthy of being
evoked by so great a master. But alas, fate willed it otherwise. M.
Seguin pronounced the head, though but feebly representing the
mixed virile force and feminine delicacy of his own Sardanapalus,
'sufficiently well painted, as the work of a beginner;' and Hiram was
forthwith duly enrolled among the great French painter's select pupils,
to start work as soon as he had had a fortnight with Audouin, 'for
inspecting the sights of the city.'