If love is love at all, it
surely means complete union; and one cannot imagine a perfect
marriage where there is any possibility of wrangling over different
forms of creed. The other piece of news, which created even more
sensation than the first, was the purchase of Angela Sovrani's great
picture, "The Coming of Christ," by the Americans. As soon as this
was known, the crowd of visitors to the artist's studio assumed
formidable proportions, and from early morning till late afternoon,
the people kept coming and going in hundreds, which gradually
swelled to thousands. For by-and-by the history of the picture got
about in disjointed morsels of information and gossip which soon
formed a consecutive and fairly correct narration. Experts
criticized it,--critics "explained" it--and presently nothing was
talked of in the art world but "The Coming of Christ" and the artist
who painted it, Angela Sovrani. A woman!--only a woman! It seemed
incredible--impossible! For why should a woman think? Why should a
woman dare to be a genius? It seemed very strange! How much more
natural for her to marry some decent man of established position and
be content with babies and plain needlework! Here was an abnormal
prodigy in the ways of womanhood,--a feminine creature who ventured
to give an opinion of her own on something else than dress,--who
presumed as it were, to set the world thinking hard on a particular
phase of religious history! Then, as one after the other talked and
whispered and commented, the story of Angela's own private suffering
began to eke out bit by bit,--how she had been brutally stabbed m
her own studio in front of her own picture by no other than her own
betrothed husband Florian Varillo, who was moved to his murderous
act by a sudden impulse of jealousy,--and how that same Varillo had
met with his deserts in death by fire in the Trappist monastery on
the Campagna.
Pages:
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860