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my dear aunt; emphatically no. It would be comfortless. If I
kissed it, it would be cold. If I put my arms round it, it would
be full of sharp edges which would hurt. If I tried to get any
emotion out of it, it would only jingle.
What do you want then?
Nothing. But if I mustlet it be plain flesh and blood.
Cannibal! said my aunt.
We both laughed.
But you can have plenty of flesh and blood, with money as well,
for the asking, she insisted; and thereupon my two cousins, Dora
and Gwendolen, entered the drawingroom and interrupted the
conversation. They are both bouncing, freshfaced girls, in the
early twenties. They ride and shoot and bicycle and golf and
dance, and the elder writes little stories for the magazines. As
I do none of these things, I am convinced they regard me as a
poor sort of creature. When they hand me a cup of tea I almost
expect them to pat me on the head and say, Good dog! I am
long, lean, stooping, hatchetfaced, hawknosed, nearsighted. I
have not the breezy air of the jolly young stockbrokers they are
in the habit of meeting. They rather alarm me. Moreover, they
have managed to rear a colossal pile of wholly incorrect
information on every subject under the sun, and are addicted to
letting chunks of it fall about one's ears. This stuns me,
rendering conversation difficult.
As I had not seen Dora since her return from Rome, where she had
spent the early spring, I asked, in some trepidation, for her
impressions. Before I could collect myself, I was listening to a
lecture on St. Peter's. She told me it was built by Michael
Angelo. I suggested that some credit might be given to Bramante,
not to speak of Rosellino, Baldassare Peruzzi and the two San
Gallo's.
Oh! said my young lady, with a superb air of omniscience. It
was all Michael Angelo's design. _The others only tinkered away
at it afterwards_.
After receiving this brickbat I took my leave.
To console myself I looked up, during the evening, Michael
Angelo's noble letter about Bramante.
One cannot deny, says he, that Bramante was as excellent in
architecture as any one has been from the ancients to now. He
placed the first stone of St. Peter's, not full of confusion, but
clear, neat, and luminous, and isolated all round in such a way
that it injured no part of the palace, and was held to be a
beautiful thing, as is still apparent, in such a way that any
one who has departed from the said order of Bramante, as San

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