He says, in speaking of the Carnival, "For
my part, though I pretended to take no interest in the matter, I could
have bandied confetti and nosegays as readily and riotously as any
urchin there." These few words explain his magnetism. The decorous
pretense of his observant calm could not make us forget the bursts of
mirth and vigorous abandon which now and then revealed the flame of
unstinted life in his heart. And I, watching constantly as I did, saw
a riotous throw of the confetti, a mirthful smile of Carnival spirits,
when my father was radiant for a few moments with a youth's, a faun's
merriment.
Having quoted a letter of my sister's which expresses his opinion and
her own of the irksomeness of sight-seeing, however heroic the spot, I
will add this little paragraph from the next winter's correspondence,
when, though only fifteen, she wrote very well of Europe and America,
concluding: "It shows you have not lived in Europe, dear aunt, and do
not know what it is to breathe day after day the atmosphere of art,
that you can think of our being satisfied. We have seen
satisfactorily, but the longer we stay, the higher and deeper is our
enjoyment, and the more are our minds fitted to understand and admire,
and the nearer do our souls approach in thought and imagination to
that fount of glory and beauty, from which the old artists drew so
freely."
In art, Catholicity was utterly bowed down to by my relatives and
their friends, because without it this great art would not have been.
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