Two other angels smote him with rods. He fell to earth, as Monsieur Delacroix shows us here, and was swallowed up in darkness. It is right and salutary that this adventure should be cited as an example to the Republican Commissioners of Police and to the sacrilegious agents of the law. There will always be Heliodoruses, but, let it be known, every time they lay their hands on the property of the Church, which is the property of the poor, they shall be chastised with rods and blinded by the angels.”
“I should like this painting, or, better still, Raphael’s sublimer conception of the same subject, to be engraved in little pictures fully coloured, and distributed as rewards in all the schools.”
“Uncle,” said young Maurice, with a yawn, “I think these things are simply ghastly. I prefer Matisse and Metzinger.”
These words fell unheeded, and old Guinardon from his ladder held forth:
“Only the primitives caught a glimpse of Heaven. Beauty is only to be found between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The antique, the impure antique, which regained its pernicious influence over the minds of the sixteenth century, inspired poets and painters with criminal notions and immodest conceptions, with horrid impurities, filth. All the artists of the Renaissance were swine, including Michael-Angelo.”
