THE PORTRAIT I DID NOT PAINT
could claim his aid and indulgence. This seemed to have some effect upon him, and being an offhand sort of man, and not standing too strictly on the dignity of his high office, he sat down cosily beside me and continued, "You will not be received at the Vatican for any such purpose; the Pope is old and ill, and any time he has to spare has to be given to his ecclesiastical duties. You can obtain an audience as other strangers do, but as for anything else, make up your mind now that all your efforts will be futile. Why, they will treat you just like a carpenter or any other workman. Artists are nothing to them. Life is a serious matter to the Church."
"They must be very different from the old popes, then," I replied, "for they loved to honour and to patronize artists and Art. Have they changed so much as that? "I don't know if they have changed," Sir Clare began, but I interrupted him, for I was beginning to be nettled, by warmly saying, "I have no doubt that Michael Angelo was a very good carpenter, as well as architect and sculptor and poet, and that Giotto and Leonardo da Vinci and Cellini were all good workmen, as well as great geniuses. Where would the Church be now if it had not been for these men who have given it substantial and material evidence of greatness? Is not St. Peter's the glory of the Church, and did not Michael Angelo design it? Is not the Vatican, with all its treasures, the work of artists, and is it not the home of the popes?" "Oh! tut, tut!" broke in the Ambassador, "the Pope would be just as great and just as much sought after and worshipped if he lived under a tent in the desert." Then changing the subject, as he thought, he asked me how long I had been in Rome and if I were alone. On telling him I had brought my wife, he
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