第76章

Is this puerile niggling, this feeble scrawl, this impotent rubbish, all you can produce--you, who but now found Rubens commonplace and vulgar, and were pointing out the tricks of his mystery? Pardon, Ogreat chief, magnificent master and poet! You can DO.We critics, who sneer and are wise, can but pry, and measure, and doubt, and carp.Look at the lion.Did you ever see such a gross, shaggy, mangy, roaring brute? Look at him eating lumps of raw meat--positively bleeding, and raw and tough--till, faugh! it turns one's stomach to see him--O the coarse wretch! Yes, but he is a lion.

Rubens has lifted his great hand, and the mark he has made has endured for two centuries, and we still continue wondering at him, and admiring him.What a strength in that arm! What splendor of will hidden behind that tawny beard, and those honest eyes! Sharpen your pen, my good critic, shoot a feather into him; hit him, and make him wince.Yes, you may hit him fair, and make him bleed, too;but, for all that, he is a lion--a mighty, conquering, generous, rampageous Leo Belgicus--monarch of his wood.And he is not dead yet, and I will not kick at him.

SIR ANTONY.--In that "Pieta" of Van Dyck, in the Museum, have you ever looked at the yellow-robed angel, with the black scarf thrown over her wings and robe? What a charming figure of grief and beauty! What a pretty compassion it inspires! It soothes and pleases me like a sweet rhythmic chant.See how delicately the yellow robe contrasts with the blue sky behind, and the scarf binds the two! If Rubens lacked grace, Van Dyck abounded in it.What a consummate elegance! What a perfect cavalier! No wonder the fine ladies in England admired Sir Antony.Look at--Here the clock strikes three, and the three gendarmes who keep the Musee cry out, "Allons! Sortons! Il est trois heures! Allez!

Sortez!" and they skip out of the gallery as happy as boys running from school.And we must go too, for though many stay behind--many Britons with Murray's Handbooks in their handsome hands--they have paid a franc for entrance-fee, you see; and we knew nothing about the franc for entrance until those gendarmes with sheathed sabres had driven us out of this Paradise.

But it was good to go and drive on the great quays, and see the ships unlading, and by the citadel, and wonder howabouts and whereabouts it was so strong.We expect a citadel to look like Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein at least.But in this one there is nothing to see but a flat plain and some ditches, and some trees, and mounds of uninteresting green.And then I remember how there was a boy at school, a little dumpy fellow of no personal appearance whatever, who couldn't be overcome except by a much bigger champion, and the immensest quantity of thrashing.A perfect citadel of a boy, with a General Chasse sitting in that bomb-proof casemate, his heart, letting blow after blow come thumping about his head, and never thinking of giving in.

And we go home, and we dine in the company of Britons, at the comfortable Hotel du Parc, and we have bought a novel apiece for a shilling, and every half-hour the sweet carillon plays the waltz from Dinorah in the air.And we have been happy; and it seems about a month since we left London yesterday; and nobody knows where we are, and we defy care and the postman.

SPOORWEG.--Vast green flats, speckled by spotted cows, and bound by a gray frontier of windmills; shining canals stretching through the green; odors like those exhaled from the Thames in the dog-days, and a fine pervading smell of cheese; little trim houses, with tall roofs, and great windows of many panes; gazebos, or summer-houses, hanging over pea-green canals; kind-looking, dumpling-faced farmers'

women, with laced caps and golden frontlets and earrings; about the houses and towns which we pass a great air of comfort and neatness;a queer feeling of wonder that you can't understand what your fellow-passengers are saying, the tone of whose voices, and a certain comfortable dowdiness of dress, are so like our own;--whilst we are remarking on these sights, sounds, smells, the little railway journey from Rotterdam to the Hague comes to an end.I speak to the railway porters and hackney coachmen in English, and they reply in their own language, and it seems somehow as if we understood each other perfectly.The carriage drives to the handsome, comfortable, cheerful hotel.We sit down a score at the table; and there is one foreigner and his wife,--I mean every other man and woman at dinner are English.As we are close to the sea, and in the midst of endless canals, we have no fish.We are reminded of dear England by the noble prices which we pay for wines.I confess I lost my temper yesterday at Rotterdam, where I had to pay a florin for a bottle of ale (the water not being drinkable, and country or Bavarian beer not being genteel enough for the hotel);--I confess, I say, that my fine temper was ruffled, when the bottle of pale ale turned out to be a pint bottle; and I meekly told the waiter that I had bought beer at Jerusalem at a less price.But then Rotterdam is eighteen hours from London, and the steamer with the passengers and beer comes up to the hotel windows; whilst to Jerusalem they have to carry the ale on camels' backs from Beyrout or Jaffa, and through hordes of marauding Arabs, who evidently don't care for pale ale, though I am told it is not forbidden in the Koran.Mine would have been very good, but I choked with rage whilst drinking it.A florin for a bottle, and that bottle having the words "imperial pint," in bold relief, on the surface! It was too much.I intended not to say anything about it; but I MUST speak.A florin a bottle, and that bottle a pint! Oh, for shame! for shame! I can't cork down my indignation; I froth up with fury; I am pale with wrath, and bitter with scorn.