Chapter 35

While mutual political, social, and philosophical interests drew me to Giuseppe Saredo, all the artistic side of my nature bound me to Georges Noufflard. Saredo was an Italian from a half-French part,--he was born at Savona, near Chambéry,--and his culture was as much French as Italian; Noufflard was a Frenchman possessed by such a love for Italy that he spoke the purest Florentine, felt himself altogether a Southerner, and had made up his mind to take up his permanent abode in Italy. He married, too, a few years afterwards, a lovely Florentine woman, and settled down in Florence.

What entirely won my heart about him was the femininely delicate consideration and unselfish devotion of his nature, the charm there was about his manner and conversation, which revealed itself in everything he did, from the way in which he placed his hat upon his head, to the way in which he admired a work of art. But I could not have associated with him day after day, had I not been able to learn something from him. When we met again ten years later, it turned out that we had nothing especially new to tell each other. I had met him just at the right moment.

It was not only that Noufflard was very well and widely informed about the artistic treasures of Italy and the places where they were to be found, but his opinions enriched my mind, inasmuch as they spurred me on to contradiction or surprised me and won my adherence. Fresh as Julius Lange's artistic sense had been, there was nevertheless something doctrinaire and academic about it. An artist like Bernini was horrible, and nothing else to him; he had no sympathy for the sweet, half-sensual ecstasy of some of Bernini's best figures. He was an enemy of eighteenth-century art in France, saw it through the moral spectacles which in the Germanic countries had come into use with the year 1800. It was easy for Noufflard to remain unbiased by Northern doctrines, for he did not know them; he had the free eye of the beauty lover for every revelation of beauty, no matter under what form, and had the intellectual kinship of the Italianised Frenchman for many an artist unappreciated in the North. On the other hand, he naturally considered that we Northmen very much over-estimated our own. It was impossible to rouse any interest in him for Thorwaldsen, whom he considered absolutely academic. "You cannot call him a master in any sense," he exclaimed one day, when we had been looking at Thorwaldsen bas-reliefs side by side with antiques. I learnt from my intimacy with Noufflard how little impression Thorwaldsen's spirit makes on the Romance peoples. That indifference to him would soon become so widespread in Germany, I did not yet foresee.

Noufflard had a very alert appreciation of the early Renaissance, especially in sculpture; he was passionately in love with the natural beauties of Italy, from North to South, and he had a kind of national-psychological gift of singling out peculiarly French, Italian or German traits. He did not know the German language, but he was at home in German music, and had studied a great deal of German literature in translation; just then he was reading Hegel's "Aesthetics," the abstractions in which veritably alarmed him, and to which he very much preferred modern French Art Philosophy. In English Science, he had studied Darwin, and he was the first to give me a real insight into the Darwinian theory and a general summary of it, for in my younger days I had only heard it attacked, as erroneous, in lectures by Rasmus Nielsen on teleology.

Georges Noufflard was the first Frenchman of my own age with whom I had been intimate and whose character I partly understood and entered into, partly absorbed into my own. If many of the various opinions evident in my first lectures were strikingly emancipated from Danish national prejudices which no one hitherto had attempted to disturb, I owed this in a great measure to him. Our happy, harmonious intimacy in the Sabine Hills and in Naples was responsible, before a year was past, for whole deluges of abuse in Danish newspapers.

VI

One morning, the Consul's man-servant brought me a _permesso_ for the Collection of Sculpture in the Vatican for the same day, and a future _permesso_ for the Loggias, Stanzas, and the Sistine Chapel. I laid the last in my pocket-book. It was the key of Paradise. I had waited for it so long that I said to myself almost superstitiously: "I wonder whether anything will prevent again?" The anniversary of the day I had left Copenhagen the year before, I drove to the Vatican, went at one o'clock mid-day up the handsome staircase, and through immense, in part magnificently decorated rooms to the Sistine Chapel. I had heard so much about the disappointment it would be that not the very slightest suggestion of disappointment crossed my mind. Only a feeling of supreme happiness shot through me: at last I am here. I stood on the spot which was the real goal of my pilgrimage. I had so often examined reproductions of every figure and I had read so much about the whole, that I knew every note of the music beforehand. Now I heard it.

A voice within me whispered: So here I stand at last, shut in with the mind that of all human minds has spoken most deeply home to my soul. I am outside and above the earth and far from human kind. This is his earth and these are his men, created in his image to people his world. For this one man's work is a world, which, though that of one man only, can be placed against the productions of a whole nation, even of the most splendid nation that has ever lived, the Greeks. Michael Angelo felt more largely, more lonely, more mightily than any other. He created out of the wealth of a nature that in its essence was more than earthly. Raphael is more human, people say, and that is true; but Michael Angelo is more divine.

After the lapse of about an hour, the figures detached themselves from the throng, to my mental vision, and the whole composition fixed itself in my brain. I saw the ceiling, not merely as it is to-day, but as it was when the colours were fresh, for in places there were patches, the bright yellow, for instance, which showed the depth of colouring in which the whole had been carried out. It was Michael Angelo's intention to show us the ceiling pierced and the heavens open above it. Up to the central figures, we are to suppose that the walls continue straight up to the ceiling, as though the figures sat upright. Then all confusion disappears, and all becomes one perfect whole.

The principal pictures, such as the creation of Adam, Michael Angelo's most philosophical and most exquisite painting, I had had before my eyes upon my wall every day for ten years. The expression in Adam's face was not one of languishing appeal, as I had thought; he smiled faintly, as if calmly confident of the dignity of the life the finger of God is about to bestow upon him. The small, bronze-painted figures, expressed the suspension and repose of the ceiling; they were architectonic symbols. The troops of young heroes round about the central pillars were Michael Angelo's ideals of Youth, Beauty and Humanity. The one resting silently and thoughtfully on one knee is perhaps the most splendid. There is hardly any difference between his build and that of Adam. Adam is the more spiritual brother of these young and suffering heroes.

I felt the injustice of all the talk about the beginnings of grotesqueness in Michael Angelo's style. There are a few somewhat distorted figures, Haman, the knot of men and women adoring the snake, Jonas, as he flings himself backwards, but except these, what calm, what grandiose perfection! And which was still more remarkable, what imposing charm! Eve, in the picture of "The Fall," is perhaps the most adorable figure that Art has ever produced; her beauty, in the picture on the left, was like a revelation of what humanity really ought to have been.

It sounded almost like a lie that one man had created this in twenty-two months. Would the earth ever again produce frescoes of the same order? The 360 years that had passed over it had damaged this, the greatest pictorial work on earth, far less than I had feared.

A large aristocratic English family came in: man, wife, son, daughter, another daughter, the governess, all expensively and fashionably dressed. They stood silent for a moment at the entrance to the hall. Then they came forward as far as about the middle of the hall, looked up and about a little, said to the custodian: "Will you open the door for us?" and went out again very gracefully.

VII

I knew Raphael's Loggias from copies in _l'École des Beaux Arts_ in Paris. But I was curious to see how they would appear after this, and so, although there was only three-quarters of an hour left of the time allotted to me on my _permesso_, I went up to look at them. My first impression, as I glanced down the corridor and perceived these small ceiling pictures, barely two feet across, was: "Good gracious! This will be a sorry enjoyment after Michael Angelo!" I looked at the first painting, God creating the animals, and was quite affected: There goes the good old man, saying paternally: "Come up from the earth, all of you, you have no idea how nice it is up here." My next impression was: "How childish!" But my last was: "What genius!" How charming the picture of the Fall, and how lovely Eve! And what grandeur of style despite the smallness of the space. A God a few inches high separates light from darkness, but there is omnipotence in the movement of His arm. Jacob sees the ladder to Heaven in his dream; and this ladder, which altogether has six angels upon it, seems to reach from Earth to Heaven, infinitely long and infinitely peopled; above, we see God the Father, at an immense distance, spread His gigantic embrace (which covers a space the length of two fingers). There was the favourite picture of my childhood, Abraham prostrated before the Angels, even more marvellous in the original than I had fancied it to myself, although it is true that the effect of the picture is chiefly produced by its beauty of line. And there was Lot, departing from Sodom with his daughters, a picture great because of the perfect illusion of movement. They go on and on, against the wind and storm, with Horror behind them and Hope in front, at the back, to the right, the burning city, to the left, a smiling landscape. How unique the landscapes on all these pictures are, how marvellous, for instance, that in which Moses is found on the Nile! This river, within the narrow limits of the picture, looked like a huge stream, losing itself in the distance.

It was half-past five. My back was beginning to ache in the place which had grown tender from lying so long; without a trace of fatigue I had been looking uninterruptedly at pictures for four hours and a half.

VIII

Noufflard's best friend in Rome was a young lieutenant of the Bersaglieri named Ottavio Cerrotti, with whom we were much together. Although a Roman, he had entered the Italian army very young, and had consequently been, as it were, banished. Now, through the breach at Porta Pia, he had come back. He was twenty-four years of age, and the naïvest Don Juan one could possibly meet. He was beloved by the beautiful wife of his captain, and Noufflard, who frequented their house, one day surprised the two lovers in tears. Cerrotti was crying with his lady-love because he had been faithless to her. He had confessed to her his intimacy with four other young ladies; so she was crying, and the end of it was that he cried to keep her company.

At meals, he gave us a full account of his principal romance. He had one day met her by chance in the gardens of the Palazzo Corsini, and since that day, they had had secret meetings. But the captain had now been transferred to Terni, and tragedy had begun. Letters were constantly within an ace of being intercepted, they committed imprudences without count. He read aloud to us, without the least embarrassment, the letters of the lady. The curious thing about them was the moderation she exercised in the expression of her love, while at the same time her plans for meetings were of the most foolhardy, breakneck description.

Another fresh acquaintance that I made in those days was with three French painters, Hammon, Sain and Benner, who had studios adjoining one another. Hammon and Sain both died long since, but Benner, whom I met again in Paris in 1904, died, honoured and respected, in 1905. I was later on at Capri in company with Sain and Benner, but Hammon I saw only during this visit to Rome. His pretty, somewhat sentimental painting, _Ma soeur n'y est pas_, hung, reproduced in engraving, in every shop-window, even in Copenhagen. He was painting just then at his clever picture, _Triste Rivage_.

Hammon was born in Brittany, of humble, orthodox parents, who sent him to a monastery. The Prior, when he surprised him drawing men and women out of his head, told him that painting was a sin. The young man himself then strongly repented his inclination, but, as he felt he could not live without following it, he left the monastery, though with many strong twinges of conscience.

Now that he was older, he was ruining himself by drink, but had manifested true talent and still retained a humorous wit. One day that I was with him, a young man came to the studio and asked for his opinion of a painting; the man talked the whole time of nothing but his mother, of how much he loved her and all that he did for her. Hammon's patience gave out at last. He broke out: "And do you think, sir, that _I_ have murdered my mother? I love her very much, I assure you, _not enough to marry her_, I grant, but pretty well, all the same." After that he always spoke of him as "the young man who loves his mother."

IX

I felt as though this April, this radiant Spring, were the most glorious time in my life, I was assimilating fresh impressions of Art and Nature every hour; the conversations I was enjoying with my Italian and French friends set me day by day pondering over new thoughts; I saw myself restored to life, and a better life. At the beginning of April, moreover, some girls from the North made their triumphal entry into the Scandinavian Club. Without being specially beautiful or remarkable, they absolutely charmed me. It was a full year since the language of home had sounded in my ears from the lips of a girl, since I had seen the smile in the blue eyes and encountered the heart-ensnaring charm, in jest, or earnest, of the young women of the North. I had recently heard the entrancing castrato singing at St. Peter's, and, on conquering my aversion, could not but admire it. Now I heard once more simple, but natural, Danish and Swedish songs. Merely to speak Danish again with a young woman, was a delight. And there was one who, delicately and unmistakably and defencelessly, showed me that I was not indifferent to her. That melted me, and from that time forth the beauties of Italy were enhanced tenfold in my eyes.

All that I was acquainted with in Rome, all that I saw every day with Georges Noufflard, I could show her and her party, from the most accessible things, which were nevertheless fresh to the newcomers, such as the Pantheon, Acqua Paola, San Pietro in Montorio, the grave of Cecilia Metella, and the grottoes of Egeria, to the great collections of Art in the Vatican, or the Capitol, or in the wonderful Galleria Borghese. All this, that I was accustomed to see alone with Noufflard, acquired new splendour when a blonde girl walked by my side, asking sensible questions, and showing me the gratitude of youth for good instruction. With her nineteen years I suppose she thought me marvellously clever. But the works of Art that lay a little outside the beaten track, I likewise showed to my compatriots. I had never been able to tolerate Guido Reni; but his playing angels in the chapel of San Gregorio excited my profound admiration, and it was a satisfaction to me to pour this into the receptive ear of a girl compatriot. These angels delighted me so that I could hardly tear myself away from them. The fine malice, the mild coquetry, even in the expression of the noblest purity and the loftiest dignity, enchanted us.

I had been in the habit of going out to the environs of Rome with Georges Noufflard, for instance, to the large, handsome gardens of the Villa Doria Pamfili, or the Villa Madama, with its beautiful frescoes and stucco-work, executed by Raphael's pupils, Giulio Romano and others, from drawings by that master. But it was a new delight to drive over the Campagna with a girl who spoke Danish by my side, and to see her Northern complexion in the sun of the South. With my French friend, I gladly joined the excursions of her party to Nemi, Albano, Tivoli.

Never in my life had I felt so happy as I did then. I was quite recovered. Only a fortnight after I had risen from a sick-bed that had claimed me four months and a half, I was going about, thanks to my youth, as I did before I was ill. For my excursions, I had a comrade after my own heart, well-bred, educated, and noble-minded; I fell in love a little a few times a week; I saw lakes, fields, olive groves, mountains, scenery, exactly to my taste. I had always a _permesso_ for the Vatican collections in my pocket. I felt intoxicated with delight, dizzy with enjoyment.

It seemed to me that of all I had seen in the world, Tivoli was the most lovely. The old "temple of the Sibyl" on the hill stood on consecrated ground, and consecrated the whole neighbourhood. I loved those waterfalls, which impressed me much more than Trollhättan [Footnote: Trollhättan, a celebrated waterfall near Göteborg in Sweden.], had done in my childhood. In one place the water falls down, black and boiling, into a hollow of the rock, and reminded me of the descent into Tartarus; in another the cataract runs, smiling and twinkling with millions of shining pearls, in the strong sunlight. In a third place, the great cascade rushes down over the rocks. There, where it touches the nether rocks, rests the end of the enormous rainbow which, when the sun shines, is always suspended across it. Noufflard told me that Niagara itself impressed one less. We scrambled along the cliff until we stood above the great waterfall, and could see nothing but the roaring, foaming white water, leaping and dashing down; it looked as though the seething and spraying masses of water were springing over each other's heads in a mad race, and there was such power, such natural persuasion in it, that one seemed drawn with it, and gliding, as it were, dragged into the abyss. It was as though all Nature were disembodied, and flinging herself down.

Like a Latin, Noufflard personified it all; he saw the dance of nymphs in the waves, and their veils in the clouds of spray. My way of regarding Nature was diametrically opposite, and pantheistic. I lost consciousness of my own personality, felt myself one with the falling water and merged myself into Nature, instead of gathering it up into figures. I felt myself an individuality of the North, conscious of my being.

X

One afternoon a large party of us had taken our meal at an inn on the lake of Nemi. The evening was more than earthly. The calm, still, mountain lake, the old, filled-up crater, on the top of the mountain, had a fairy-like effect. I dropped down behind a boulder and lay for a long time alone, lost in ecstasy, out of sight of the others. All at once I saw a blue veil fluttering in the breeze quite near me. It was the young Danish girl, who had sat down with me. The red light of the evening, Nemi and she, merged in one. Not far away some people were setting fire to a blaze of twigs and leaves; one solitary bird warbled across the lake; the cypresses wept; the pines glowered; the olive trees bathed their foliage in the mild warmth; one cloud sailed across the sky, and its reflection glided over the lake. One could not bear to raise the voice.

It was like a muffled, muffled concert. Here were life, reality and dreams. Here were sun, warmth and light. Here were colour, form and line, and in this line, outlined by the mountains against the sky, the artistic background of all the beauty.

Noufflard and I accompanied our Northern friends from Albano to the station; they were going on as far as Naples, and thence returning home. We said good-bye and walked back to Albano in the mild Summer evening. The stars sparkled and shone bright, Cassiopaeia showed itself in its most favourable position, and Charles's Wain stood, as if in sheer high spirits, on its head, which seemed to be its recreation just about this time.

It, too, was evidently a little dazed this unique, inimitable Spring.

INDEX

Aagesen, Professor Aarestrup, Emil About, Edmond Adam _Adam Homo_ _Adventures on a Walking Tour_ Aeneid, The Aeschylus Agar, Mlle. _Aladdin_ Alcibiades Algreen-Ussing, Frederik Algreen-Ussing, Otto _Ali and Gulhyndi_ Alibert, Mr. Andersen, H.C. _Angelo_ Angelo, Michael _Antony_ Apel Aristotle _Arne_ Arrest, Professor d' Art, Danish, French, German dramatic Astronomy Auerbach, Berthold Augier Augustenborg, Duke of

Baagöe Baggesen Bain Banville Barbier, Auguste Bazaine Beaumarchais Bech, Carl Bendix, Victor Benner Bentham Bergen, Carl von Bergh, Rudolp Bergsöe Bernhardt, Sarah Bible, The Bille Bismarck Bissen, Wilhelm Björnson Blanchetti, Costanza Blicher Bluhme, Geheimeraad Borup Bov _Boy, A Happy_ _Brand_ Bretteville Bröchner, H. Brohan, The Sisters Brussels Bruun, Emil _Buch der Lieder_ _Burgraves, Les_ Byron

Caesar _Caprice, Un_ Caro Casellini Catullus Cerrotti, Ottavio Chamounix Chanson de Roland Chasles, Émile Chasles, Philarète Chatterton Choteau, Marie Christian VIII. Christian IX. Christianity Cinq-Mars Clarétie, Jules Clausen Cologne Comte Copenhagen Coppée Coquelin Corday, Charlotte Correggio Cousin Criticisms and Portraits Crone

Dame aux Camélias, La Danish Literature Dante Darwin David, C.N. David, Ludvig Delacroix Delisle Devil, The Dichtung und Wahrheit Disraeli, Divina Commedia Don Juan Don Quixote Dörr, Dr. Drachmann Drama, German Driebein Dualism in Our Modern Philosophy Dubbels Dubois, Mlle. Dumas Dumas, The Younger

Eckernförde Edda, The Edward, Uncle Either-Or Esselbach, Madam Ethica Euripides

Falkman Farum Faust Favart, Madame Favre, Jules Feuerbach, Ludwig Feuillet, Octave Fights, Between the Filomena Fils de Giboyer, Le Fisher Girl, The Flaubert Florence Fontane, M. For Self-Examination For Sweden and Norway Fourier France Nouvelle, La Frascati Frederik VII French Literature French Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century, The French Revolution Frithiof's Saga Frossard _Gabrielle_ Gallenga, Antonio Gambetta Gautier _Geneva_ Gerhard Germany Gérôme _Gerusalemme liberata_, Tasso's _Ghost Letters_ _Ghosts_ Girardin Gladstone Gleyre God _Gods of the North, The_ Goethe Goldschmidt, Dr. Goldschmidt, M. Goncourt, the brothers; Edmond de _Government, Representative_ Gram, Professor Grammont, The Duc de Grégoire _Gringoire_ Grönbeck, Groth, Claus Grundtvig Guell y Rente, Don José Guémain, Mademoiselle Guizot

Hage, Alfred Hagemeister, Mr. _Hakon, Earl_ Hall Hamburg _Hamilton's Philosophy, Examination of_ _Hamlet_ Hammerich Hammon Hansen, Octavius Hauch; Rinna Hebbel Hegel Heiberg, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Johanne Louise Heine Hello, Ernest Henrietta Herbart _Hernani_ _Hero of Our Time, A_ Hertz, Henrik History, The Philosophy of _History of English Literature,_ Hobbema Hohlenberg, Pastor Holberg Holst, Professor H.P. Homer Hoppe, Mr. Horace Höyen Hugo, Victor Hume Huysmann Hvasser

Ibsen _Indiana_ Ingeborg Ingemann Inger _Inheritance, The_ _Intelligence, De l'_

Jacob, Uncle _Jacques_ _Jamber_ Janet Jens. Jesus. _Jesus, Life of_. Jews. _Joie fait Peur, La_. Judaism. _Judith_. Julius, Uncle. Jutland.