Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/155

 One afternoon as they came down from Fiesole, twenty or thirty carriages in all, like a funeral cortège or a wedding—you could take your choice—William voiced a plaint.

"In Rome I saw all the churches—St. Peter's, the Vatican the galleries, the museums, the wrecks and ruins; same here in Florence. And what do I know? Nothing. I can't tell the name of a picture, a church, or a ruin. I guess I'm solid ivory and no cracks."

"Don't let that bother you. No human being can assimilate all these things at once. Years from now you'll be staring over your pipe, and all these wonderful beauties will return to you, one by one; you'll understand and your heart will glow with gladness. You don't want to see these things just to go back and tell about them. They are for us to dream over."

"Look!" he cried, suddenly.

"Where?"

"Well, what do you know about that! See, they're building something, putting up something that's not a ruin, that's brand-new!"

"Now you're trying to be sarcastic."

"Maybe I am. But my head seems filled with one of these dago soups; a thousand years, and you couldn't tell what was in it."

They came into Venice at sunset. For once William was bereft of speech. The brooding silence of this magic city in the sea laid hold of him.