Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/76

66 defacing treatment; the terrace with its oaks gnarled and twisted with age; the fountains; the roses; the flower-beds; and in the distance, "over the dumb Campagna-sea," the hills melting into light under the evening sky—all these made an intaglio upon him such as was not readily to be effaced, and which he learned to love. Perhaps because, after all, Italy is even more the land of beauty than of what is venerable in art, he did not feel the want of what Mr. Symonds calls the "mythopœic sense." It is a land ever young, in spite of age. Its monuments, assertive as they are, so blend with the landscape, are so in harmony with the surroundings, that the yawning gulf of years that would separate us from them is made to vanish, and they come to live with us.

And the place was teeming with tradition. From the time, 1540, when it had been designed by Hannibal Lippi for Cardinal Ricci, passing thence into the hands of Alexandro de Medici, and later into those of Leo XI., it had been the home of art; and then, on its acquisition by the French Academy in 1804, it became the home of artists. Here had lived and worked and dreamed David, Ingres, Delaroche, Vernet, Hérold, Benoist, Halevy, Berlioz, Thomas, Gounod, and the minor host of them. In truth the list awed Bizet not a little, and had he needed an incentive here it was. For the rest, he was supremely content. As a pensionnaire of the Academy he had two hundred francs a month, and he apportioned them in this wise: Nourriture, 75fr.; vin, 25fr.; retenue, 25 fr.; location de piano, 15fr.; blanchissage, 5fr.; bois, chandelles, timbre-poste, etc., 10fr.; gants, 5fr.; perte sur le change de la monnaie, 5fr. Even then he wrote: "I have more than thirty francs pour faire le grand garçon." In another letter he says: "I seem to cling to Rome more than ever. The longer I know it, the more I love it. Everything is so beautiful. Each street—even the filthiest of them—has its own charm for me. And perhaps Rh