That is all. And if you can be pleased with this, you can see Florence.
But if not, by all means amuse yourself there, if you find it amusing,
as long as you like; you can never see it.
But if indeed you are pleased, ever so little, with this fresco, think
what that pleasure means. I brought you, on purpose, round, through the
richest overture, and farrago of tweedledum and tweedledee, I could
find in Florence; and here is a tune of four notes, on a shepherd's
pipe, played by the picture of nobody; and yet you like it! You know
what music is, then. Here is another little tune, by the same player,
and sweeter. I let you hear the simplest first.
The fresco on the left hand, with the bright blue sky, and the rosy
figures! Why, anybody might like that!
Yes; but, alas, all the blue sky is repainted. It _was_ blue
always, however, and bright too; and I dare say, when the fresco was
first done, anybody _did_ like it.
You know the story of Joachim and Anna, I hope? Not that I do, myself,
quite in the ins and outs; and if you don't I'm not going to keep you
waiting while I tell it. All you need know, and you scarcely, before
this fresco, need know so much, is, that here are an old husband and
old wife, meeting again by surprise, after losing each other, and being
each in great fear;--meeting at the place where they were told by God
each to go, without knowing what was to happen there.
"So they rushed into one another's arms, and kissed each other.
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