We came out and stood a long time looking up in the pale afternoon light
at the beautiful face of the tenderly aging but not yet decrepit casino.
It was utterly charming, and it prompted many vagaries which I might
easily have mistaken for ideas. This is perhaps the best of such
experiences, and, after you have been with famous works of art and have
got them well over and done with, it is natural and it is not unjust
that you should wish to make them some return, if not in kind, then in
quantity. You will try to believe that you have thought about them, and
you should not too strictly inquire as to the fact. It is some such
forbearance that accounts for a good deal of the appreciation and even
the criticism of works of art.
IX
DRAMATIC INCIDENTS
If the joke of the door-keeper at the Farnesina was not so delicate in
any sense as some other jokes, it had, at least, the merit of being
voluntary. In fact, it is the only voluntary joke which I remember
hearing in the Tuscan tongue from the Roman mouth during a stay of three
months in the Eternal City.
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