When he said, "Does this interest you, Dorothea? Shall we stay
a little longer? I am ready to stay if you wish it,"--it seemed
to her as if going or staying were alike dreary. Or, "Should you
like to go to the Farnesina, Dorothea? It contains celebrated
frescos designed or painted by Raphael, which most persons think
it worth while to visit."
"But do you care about them?" was always Dorothea's question.
"They are, I believe, highly esteemed. Some of them represent
the fable of Cupid and Psyche, which is probably the romantic
invention of a literary period, and cannot, I think, be reckoned
as a genuine mythical product. But if you like these wall-paintings
we can easily drive thither; and you will then, I think, have seen
the chief works of Raphael, any of which it were a pity to omit
in a visit to Rome. He is the painter who has been held to combine
the most complete grace of form with sublimity of expression.
Such at least I have gathered to be the opinion of cognoscenti."
This kind of answer given in a measured official tone, as of a
clergyman reading according to the rubric, did not help to justify
the glories of the Eternal City, or to give her the hope that if she
knew more about them the world would be joyously illuminated for her.
There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent
creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge
seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.
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