No More Learning

Signori, pardon me; but all such questions
Seem to me idle.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Idle as the wind.
And now, Maestro, I will say once more
How admirable I esteem your work,
And leave you, without further interruption.

TITIAN.
Your friendly visit hath much honored me.

GIOROIO.
Farewell.

MICHAEL ANGELO to GIORGIO, going out.

If the Venetian painters knew
But half as much of drawing as of color,
They would indeed work miracles in art,
And the world see what it hath never seen.



VI

PALAZZO CESARINI

VITTORIA COLONNA, seated in an armchair; JULIA GONZAGA, standing
near her.

JULIA.
It grieves me that I find you still so weak
And suffering.

VITTORIA.
No, not suffering; only dying.
Death is the chillness that precedes the dawn;
We shudder for a moment, then awake
In the broad sunshine of the other life.
I am a shadow, merely, and these hands,
These cheeks, these eyes, these tresses that my husband
Once thought so beautiful, and I was proud of
Because he thought them so, are faded quite,--
All beauty gone from them.

JULIA.
Ah, no, not that.
Paler you are, but not less beautiful.

VITTORIA.
Hand me the mirror. I would fain behold
What change comes o'er our features when we die.
Thank you. And now sit down beside me here
How glad I am that you have come to-day,
Above all other days, and at the hour
When most I need you!

JULIA.
Do you ever need me?

VICTORIA.

Always, and most of all to-day and now.
Do you remember, Julia, when we walked,
One afternoon, upon the castle terrace
At Ischia, on the day before you left me?

JULIA.