In spite of his continual need of movement, his passionate love
of sport in all its forms, and especially of motoring, his
expansive, rather mad, but very attractive youthfulness, Alfonso
XIII, even in his flying trips, never loses the occasion to
improve his mind. He is very quick at seizing a point, possesses
a remarkable power of assimilation, and, altho he does not read
much, for he has no patience, he is remarkably well informed
regarding the smallest details in matters that interest him. One
day, for instance, he asked me, point-blank:
“Do you know how many gendarmes there are in France?”
I confess that I was greatly puzzled what to reply, for I have
never cared much about statistics. I ventured to say, off-hand:
“Ten thousand.”
“Ten thousand! Come, M. Paoli, what are you thinking of? That’s
the number we have in Spain. It’s more like twenty thousand.”
This figure, as I afterward learned, was strictly accurate.
As for business of State, I also noticed that the king devoted
more time to it than his restless life would lead one to
believe. Rising, winter and summer, at six o’clock, he stays
indoors and works regularly during the early part of the
morning, and often again at night. In this connection, one of
his ministers said to me:
“He never shows a sign of either weariness or boredom. The
king’s ‘frivolity’ is a popular fallacy. On the contrary,
he is terribly painstaking. Just like the queen mother, he
insists upon clear and detailed explanations before he will
sign the least document; and he knows quite well how to make
his will felt. Besides, he is fond of work, and he can work
anywhere--in a motor-car, in a boat, in a train, as well as in
his study.”--XAVIER PAOLI, _McClure’s_.
(2293)
* * * * *
Any one, says a writer in _The Atlantic Monthly_, can hold
out a dumb-bell for a few seconds; but in a few more seconds the
arm sags; it is only the trained athlete who can endure even to
the minute’s end.
For Hawthorne to hold the people of “The Scarlet Letter”
steadily in focus from November to February, to say nothing of
six years’ preliminary brooding, is surely more of an artistic
feat than to write a short story between Tuesday and Friday.
The three years and nine months of unremitting labor devoted to
“Middlemarch” does not in itself afford any criterion of the
value of the book; but given George Eliot’s brain power and
artistic instinct to begin with, and then concentrate them for
that period upon a single theme, and it is no wonder that the
result is a masterpiece.
“Jan van Eyck was never in a hurry,” says Charles Reade of the
great Flemish painter, in “The Cloister and the Hearth,” and
therefore the world will not forget him in a hurry. (Text.)
(2294)
=Painting the Living=--See MOTIVE, MERCENARY.
=Palliatives=--See MUSIC AS AN ANESTHETIC.