picture. "If Alec had the chance of becoming a King, he would be a very good one," she said loyally. Poluski's wizened cheeks puckered into a grin. He glanced at the easel and thence to the picture on the wall. "Perfectly, my dear Joan," he said. "And, by the bones of Kosciusko, you have chosen a proper subject, The Fortune Teller! Were you filling our warrior with dreams of empire? Well, well, I don't know which is more potent with monarchs, woman or dynamite. In Alec's case I fancy I should bet on the woman. Here, for example, is one that shook Heaven, and I have always thought that Eve was not given fair treatment, or she would surely have twisted the serpent's tail," and, humming the refrain of "Les Demi-Vièrges," [Pg 20]he climbed the small platform he had erected in front of the world famous Murillo. [Pg 20] Back to back, separated by little more than half the width of the gallery, Joan and Poluski worked steadily for twenty minutes. The Pole sang to himself incessantly, now bassooning between his thin lips the motif of some rhapsody of Lizst's, now murmuring the words of some catchy refrain from the latest review. Anybody else who so transgressed the rules would have been summarily turned out by the guards; but the men knew him, and the Grande Galerie, despite its treasures, or perhaps because of them, is the least popular part of the Louvre. Artists haunt it; but the Parisian, the provincial, the globe trotter, gape once in their lives at Andrea del Sarto, Titian, Salvator Rosa, Murillo of course, and the rest of the mighty dead, and then ask with a yawn, "Where are the Crown Jewels?" So the Humming Bee annoyed none by his humming; but he stopped short in an improvised variation on the theme of Vulcan's song in "Philemon and Baucis" when he heard a subdued but none the less poignant cry of distress from Joan. In order to turn his head he was compelled to twist his ungainly body, and Joan, who was standing well away from her canvas, was aware of the movement. She too turned. "I am going," she announced. "I cannot do anything right to-day. Just look at that white feather!" [Pg 21] [Pg 21] "Where?"
Prev.
Back
Top