 | III. Seven stories, with basement and attic |  |
3. III.
WHY should I go on to speak of pictures here—
except that I love them? Why should I recall
the disgusting and wonderful old men and women
of Denner, which hang with glass over them, within
the window bays of the palace of Belvidere at Vienna?
Why should my fancy go stalking through that great
Rubens Museum, with its red arms, fat bosoms, pincushion
cheeks, and golden hair?
Why does my thought whisk away to that gorgeous
salon of Dresden, where hangs the greatest of all Raphael's
Madonnas?
The face of the Virgin is all that makes perfection
in female beauty; it is modest, it is tender, it is intelligent.
The eyes are living eyes, but with no touch of
earthiness, save the shade of care which earth's sorrows
give even to the Holy Virgin. She wears the dignity
of the mother of Christ, with nothing of severity to repulse;
she wears the youthful innocence of the spouse
of David, with no touch of levity; she wears the modest
bearing of one whose child was nursed in a manger,
with the presence of one “chosen from among women.”
She is mounting on clouds to heaven; light as an angel,
but with no wings; her divinity sustains her. In her
arms she holds lightly but firmly the infant Jesus, who
has the face of a true child, with something else beyond
humanity; his eye has a little of the look of a frighted
boy in some strange situation, where he knows he is
safe, and where yet he trembles. His light, silky hair
is strewn by a wind (you feel it like a balm) over a
brow beaming with soul; he looks deserving the adoration
the shepherds gave him; and there is that—in his
manner, innocent as the babe he was—in his look,
Divine as the God he was, which makes one see in the
child
—“the father of the man.”
Pope Sixtus is lifting his venerable face in adoration
from below; and opposite, Saint Barbara, beautiful and
modest, has dropped her eyes, though religious awe and
their heads and their little wings only above the edge
of the picture, are two cherubs, who are only less in
beauty than the Christ; they are twins—but they are
twin angels—and Christ is God.
The radiance in their faces is, I think, the most
wonderful thing I have ever seen in painting. They are
listening to the celestial harmony which attends the
triumph of the Virgin. These six faces make up the
picture; the Jesus, a type of divinity itself; the Virgin,
the purity of earth, as at the beginning,—yet humble,
because of earth; the cherubs, the purity of heaven, conscious
of its high estate; the two saints, earth made
pure and sanctified by Christ—half doubting, yet full
of hope.
I wrote thus much in my note-book, as I stood before
the picture in that room of the Royal Gallery which
looks down upon the market-place of Dresden; and with
the painting lingering in my thought more holily than
sermons of a Sunday noontime, I strolled over the market-place,
crossed the long bridge which spans the Elbe,
and wandered up the banks of the river as far as the
Findlater Gardens. The terrace is dotted over with
tables and benches, where one may sit over his coffee
or ice, and enjoy a magnificent view of Dresden, the
river, the bridge, and the green battle-field where Moreau
fell. It was a mild day of winter, and I sat there
my eye from time to time over an old number of the
Débats newspaper, which the waiter had placed upon
my table.
When there is no political news of importance stirring,
I was always in the habit of running over the
column of Faits Divers: “Different Things” translates
it, but does not give a good idea of the piquancy which
usually belongs to that column. The suicides are all
there; the extraordinary robberies are there; important
discoveries are entered; and all the bits of scandal,
which, of course, everybody reads and everybody says
should never have been published.
In the journal under my hand there was mention of
two murders,—one of them of that stereotype class growing
out of a drunken brawl, which the world seems to
regard indifferently, as furnishing the needed punctuation-marks
in the history of civilization. The other
drew my attention very closely.
The Count de Roquefort, an elderly gentleman of
wealth and distinguished family, residing in a chateau a
little off the high road leading from Nismes to Avignon,
in the South of France, had been brutally murdered in
his own house. The Count was unmarried; none of
his family connection resided with him, and aside from
a considerable retinue of servants, he lived quite alone—
devoted, as was said, to scientific pursuits.
It appeared that two days before his assassination
he was visited by a young man, a stranger in that region,
who was received (the servants testified) kindly
by the Count, and who passed two hours closeted with
him in his library. On the day of the murder the same
young man was announced; his manner was excited,
and he was ushered, by the Count's order, into the
library, as before.
It would seem, however, that the Count had anticipated
the possibility of some trouble, since he had
secured the presence of two “officers of the peace” in
his room. It was evident that the visitor had come by
appointment. The officers were concealed under the
hangings of a bay-window at the end of the library,
with orders from the Count not to act, unless they should
see signs of violence.
The young man, on entering, advanced toward the
table beside which the Count was seated, reading. He
raised his head at the visitor's entrance, and beckoned
to a chair.
The stranger approached more nearly, and without
seating himself, addressed the Count in a firm tone of
voice to this effect:
“I have come to ask, Monsieur le Comte, if you are
prepared to accept the propositions I made to you two
days ago?”
The Count seemed to hesitate for a moment; but
hall below.
The visitor appeared excited by his calmness, and
added, “I remind you, for the last time, of the vow I
have sworn to accomplish if you refuse my demand.”
“I do refuse,” said the Count, firmly. “It is a
rash —”
It was the last word upon his lips; for before the
officers could interfere, the visitor had drawn a pistol
from his breast and discharged it at the head of the
Count. The ball entered the brain. The Count lingered
for two hours after, but showed no signs of consciousness.
The assassin, who was promptly arrested, is a stalwart
man of about thirty, and from the contents of his
portmanteau, which he had left at the inn of an adjoining
village, it is presumed that he followed the profession
of an artist.
The cause of the murder is still a mystery; the
Count had communicated nothing to throw light upon it.
He was a kind master, and was not known to have an
enemy in the world.
I had read this account with that eager curiosity
with which I believe all—even the most sensitive and
delicate—unwittingly devour narratives of that kind; I
had finished my half-cup of coffee, and was conjecturing
what could possibly be the motive for such a murder,
strange visitor, when suddenly—like a flash—the conviction
fastened itself upon me, that the murderer was
none other than Emile Roque!
I did not even think in that moment of the remote
similarity in the two names—Roque and De Roquefort.
For anything suggestive that lay in it, the name might
as well have been De Montfort or De Courcy; I am
quite sure of that.
Indeed, no association of ideas, no deduction from
the facts named, led me to the conclusion which I formed
on the spur of the moment. Yet my conviction was as
strong as my own consciousness. I knew Emile Roque
was the murderer; I remembered it; for I remembered
his copy of the head of the castaway in Géricault's
Wreck of the Medusa!
When I had hazarded the conjecture of suicide, I
had reasoned loosely from the changed appearance of
the man, and from the suicidal tendency of the Paris
form of madness. Now I reasoned, not from the appearance
of the man at all, but from my recollection of
his painting.
There is no resignation in the face of Géricault's
shipwrecked man; there is only animal fear and despair,
lighted with but one small ray of hope. The ties
of humanity exist no longer for him; whatever was
near or dear is forgotten in that supreme moment when
and vitalizes every faculty.
Such is Géricault's picture; but Roque had added
the intensity of moral despair: he had foreshadowed
the tempest of a soul tossed on a waste—not of ocean—
but of doubt, hate, crime! I felt sure that he had unwittingly
foretokened his own destiny.
Are there not moments in the lives of all of us—
supreme moments—when we have the power lent us to
wreak in language, or on canvas, or in some wild burst
of music (as our habit of expression may lie), all our
capabilities, and to typify, by one effort of the soul, all
the issues of our life? I knew now that Emile Roque
had unwittingly done this in his head from the Medusa.
I knew that the period was to occur in his life when his
own thought and action would illustrate to the full all
the wildness and the despair to which he had already
given pictured expression. I cannot tell how I knew
this, any more than I can tell how I knew that he was
the murderer.
I wrote De Courcy that very day, referring him to
the paragraph I had read, and adding: “this artist is
Emile Roque, but who is the Count de Roquefort?”
It occasioned me no surprise to hear from him only two
days after (his letter having crossed mine on the way),
that the fact of Roque's identity with the culprit was
fully confirmed. And De Courcy added: “It is not a
Who could believe it of the man we saw rioting among
the nymphs of Watteau?”
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