A Voyage of Consolation by Sara Jeannette Duncan (best way to read books .TXT) 📕

think I _could_ make myself at home on that man-of-war under the circumstances. But I daresay he'll drag them there with him. He seems to be just that kind of a man."

"He's a very patriotic kind of a man," replied the Senator. "It's his patriotism, don't you see, that's giving him all this trouble. It's been outraged. Personally I consider Mr. Malt a very intelligent gentleman, and if he'd given me an opening as big as the eye of a needle I'm the camel that would have gone with him, Augusta."

This statement of the Senator's struck me as something to be acted upon. If there was to be a constant possibility of his going off with any chance American in regular communication with the United States, our European tour would be a good deal less interesting than I had been led to expect. While momma was getting ready for the Louvre, therefore, I stepped down to the office and wired our itinerary to his partner in Chicago. "Keep up daily communication by wire in detail," I telegraphed, "forward copies all important letters care Peters." Peters was the tourist agent who had undertaken to bless our comings and goings. I said nothing whatever to poppa, but I felt a glow of conscious triumph when I thought of Mr. Malt.

We stood and realised Paris on the pavement while the fiacre turned in from the road and drew up for us. I had every intention of being fascinated and so had momma. We had both heard often and often that good Americans when they die go to Paris, and that prepares one for a good deal in this life. We were so anxious to be pleased that we fastened with one accord upon the florist's shop under the hotel and said that it was uniquely charming, though we both knew places in Broadway that it couldn't be compared with. We looked amiably at the passers-by, and did our best to detect in the manner of their faces that _esprit_ that makes the dialogue of French novels so stimulating. What I usually thought I saw when they looked at us was a leisurely indifferentism ornamented with the suspicion of a sneer, and based upon a certain fundamental acquisitiveness and ability to make a valuation that acknowledged the desirability of our presence on business grounds, if not on personal ones. It seemed to be a preconcerted public intention to make as much noise in a given space as possible--we spoke of the cheerfulness of it, stopping our ears. The cracking of the drivers' whips alone made a _feu de joie_ that never ceased, and listening to it we knew that we ought to feel happy and elated. The driver of our fiacre was fat and rubicund, he wore a green coat, brass buttons, and a shiny top hat, and looked as if he drank constantly. His jollity was perfunctory, I know, and covered a grasping nature, but it was very well imitated, like everything in Paris. As he whirled us, with a whip-report like a pistol-shot, into the train of traffic in the middle of the street, we felt that we were indeed in the city of appearances; and I put down in my mind, not having my note-book, that Paris lives up to its photographs.

"We mustn't forget our serious object, dear," said momma, as we rolled over the cobblestones--"our literary object. What shall we note this morning? The broad streets, the elegant shops--_do_ look at that one! Darling, is it absolutely necessary to go to the Louvre this morning? There are some things we really need."

Momma addressed the Senator. I mentioned to her once that her way of doing it was almost English in its demonstrativeness, and my other parent told me privately he wished I hadn't--it aggravated it so.

"Augusta," said poppa, firmly, "I understand your feeling. I take a human interest in those stores myself, which I do not expect this picture gallery, etc., to inspire in me. But there the Louvre _is_, you see, and it's got to be done. If we spent our whole time in this city in mere pleasure and amusement, you would be the first to reproach yourself, Augusta."

A few minutes later, when we had crossed the stone quadrangle and mounted the stairs, and stood with our catalogue in the Salle Lacaze, momma said that she wouldn't have missed it for anything. She sank ecstatic upon a bench, and gave to every individual picture upon the opposite wall the tribute of her intensest admiration. It was a pleasure to see her enjoying herself so much; and poppa and I vainly tried to keep up to her with the catalogue.

"Oh, why haven't we such things in Chicago!" she exclaimed, at which the Senator checked her mildly.

"It's a mere question of time," said he. "It isn't reasonable to expect Pre-Raphaelites in a new country. But give us three or four hundred years, and we'll produce old masters which, if you ladies will excuse the expression, will knock the spots out of the Middle Ages." Poppa is such an optimist about Chicago.

The Senator went on in a strain of criticism of the pictures perfectly moderate and kindly--nothing he wouldn't have said to the artists themselves--until momma interrupted him. "Don't you think we might be silent for a time, Alexander," she said.

Momma does call him Alexander sometimes. I didn't like to mention it before, but it can't be concealed for ever. She says it's because Joshua always costs her an effort, and every woman ought to have the right to name her own husband.

"Let us offer to all this genius," she continued, indicating it, "the tribute of sealing our lips."

The Senator will always oblige. "Mine are sealed, Augusta," he replied, and so we sat in silence for the next ten minutes. But I could see by his expression, in connection with the angle at which his hat was tipped, that he was comparing the productions before him with the future old masters of Chicago, and wishing it were possible to live long enough to back Chicago.

"How they do sink in!" said momma at last. "How they sink into the soul!"

"They do," replied the Senator. "I don't deny it. But I see by the catalogue, counting Salles and Salons and all, there's seventeen rooms full of them. If they're all to sink in, for my part I'll have to enlarge the premises. And we've been here three-quarters of an hour already, and life is short, Augusta."

So we moved on where the imperishable faces of Greuze and Velasquez and Rembrandt smiled and frowned and wondered at us. As poppa said, it was easy to see that these people had ideas, and were simply longing to express them. "You feel sorry for them," he said, "just as you feel sorry for an intelligent terrier. But these poor things can't even wag their tails! Just let me know when you've had enough, Augusta."

Momma declared, with an accent of reproach, that she could never have enough. I noticed, however, that we did not stay in the second room as long as in the first one, and that our progress was steadily accelerating. Presently the Senator asked us to sit down for a few minutes while he should leave us.

"There's a picture here Bramley said I was to see without fail," he explained. "It's called 'Mona Lisa,' and it's by an artist by the name of Leonardo da Vinci. Bramley said it was a very fine painting, but I don't remember just now whether he said it was what you might call a picture for the family or not. I'll just go and ascertain," said the Senator. "Judging from some of the specimens here, oil paintings in the Middle Ages weren't intended to be chromo-lithographed."

In his absence momma and I discussed French cookery as far as we had experienced it, in detail, with prodigious yawns for which we did not even apologise. Poppa was gone a remarkably short time and came back radiant. "I've found Mona," he exclaimed, "and--she's all right. Bramley said it was the most remarkable portrait of a woman in the world--looking at it, Bramley said, you become insensible to everything--forget all about your past life and future hopes--and I guess he's about right. Come and see it."

Momma arose without enthusiasm, and I thought I detected adverse criticism in advance in her expression.

"Here she is," said the Senator presently. "Now look at that! Did you ever see anything more intellectual and cynical, and contemptuous and sweet, all in one! Lookin' at you as much as to say, 'Who are you, anyhow, from way back in the State of Illinois--commercial traveller? And what do you pretend to know?'"

Momma regarded the portrait for a moment in calm disapprobation. "I daresay she was very clever," she said at length, "but if you wish to know my opinion I _don't think much of her_. And before taking us to see another female portrait, Mr. Wick, I should be obliged if you would take the precaution of finding out _who she was_."

After which we drove quietly home.


CHAPTER VI.

Poppa decided that we had better go to Versailles by Cook's four-in-hand. There were other ways of going, but he thought we might as well take the most distinguished. He was careful to explain that the mere grandeur of this method of transportation had no weight with him; he was compelled to submit to the ostentation of it for another purpose which he had in view.

"I am not a person," said poppa, "nor is any member of my family, to thrust myself into aristocratic circles in foreign lands; but when an opportunity like this occurs for observing them without prejudice, so to speak, I believe in taking it."

We went to the starting place early, so as to get good seats, for, as momma said, the whole of the Parisian _elite_ with the President thrown in wouldn't induce her to ride with her back to the horses. In that position she would be incapable of observation.

The coaches were not there when we arrived, and presently the Senator discovered why. He told us with a slightly depressed air that they had gone round to the hotels. "Daughter," he said to me, "J.P. Wicks does hate to make a fool of himself, and this morning he's done it twice over. The best seats will go to the people who had the sense to stay at their hotels, and the fact that the coaches go round shows that they run for tourist traffic only. There won't be a Paris aristocrat among them," continued poppa gloomily, "nary an aristocrat."

When they came up we saw that there wasn't. The coaches were full of tourist traffic. It was mounted on the box seats very high up, where it looked conspicuously happy, and sounded a little hysterical; and it was packed, tight and warm and anticipant into every available seat. From its point of vantage, secured by waiting at the hotel for it, the tourist traffic looked down upon the Wick family on the pavement, in irritating compassion. As momma said, if we hadn't taken our tickets it was enough to have sent us to the Bon Marche.

A man in a black frock coat and white shirt cuffs came bareheaded from the office and pointed us out to the interpreter, who wore brass buttons. The interpreter appeared to mention it to the guide, who wiped his perspiring brows under a soft brown felt hat. A fiacre crawled round the corner and paused to look on, and the Senator said, "Now which of you three gentlemen is responsible for my ride