The Madonna belied the
wreath-supported inscription above her head, _"Miseratrix virginum
Regina nostri miserere,"_ and greeted me with a pitiless simper.
The unidentified martyr on the left stared straight in front of
him with callous indifference, and St. Roch looked aggravatingly
plump for all his ostentatious plague-spot. The picture was
worse than meaningless. It was insulting. It drove me out of
the Public Gallery. Outside a grey mist veiled the hills and a
fine penetrating rain was falling. I crept home, and for the
fiftieth time since I have been here, opened my "History of
Renaissance Morals." I threw it, with a final curse, into the
corner.
I loathe it. I care not a fig for the Renaissance or its morals.
I count its people but a pestilent herd of daubers, rhymers,
cutthroats, and courtesans. Their _hubris_ has lost its glamour
of beauty and has coarsened into vulgar insolence. They offend
me by their riotous swagger, their insistence on the animal joy
of living; chiefly by their perpetual reminiscence of Pasquale.
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