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F. TIM.: Se voi non fate orazione, si. Priestly arrogance and unctuousness, and trickeries and casuistries, cannot be painted without our discovering a likeness in the long Italian gallery. Goldoni sketched the Venetian manners of the decadence of the Republic with a French pencil, and was an Italian Scribe in style.
Yet it was a symbol here on Venus, not of barbarism, but of decadence. We started off. I may have given a false idea of the size of the Great City. Its lake, indeed, was fully fifteen miles or more in diameter. Half a million people lived on or close around that placid stretch of water. The news of Tarrano's arrival had instantly spread. Graceful boats, all propelled by hand, thronged our course.
It was necessary for Frederic to beat a retreat, and he appeared no more in Lombardy. His son Enzio, whom he left to represent him, was captured next year by the Bolognese and sentenced to perpetual captivity. Frederic died in 1250; and from this year we may date both the disruption of the Empire and the decadence of the free Italian commune.
Were this done it would become a bastard or a mongrel art, and, as history affords abundant evidence, would in due course lapse into a condition of utter decadence. Quite a volume might be written on the subject of marks on Japanese pottery and porcelain. These have long interested and frequently misled the collector. They are of various kinds.
"Without war," said the writer, "inferior and decaying nations would easily choke the growth of healthy and budding elements, and universal decadence would follow. . . . "It is not the possessor, but the victor who has the right. . . . "Reflection shows that not only is war an unqualified necessity, but that it is justifiable from every point of view. . . .
Like a heavy Roman consul of the Decadence, the man sits there, lumpy and meaningless; we might take it for a statue-portrait erected by some provincial municipality to celebrate a local magnate; but of prophecy or inspiration there is nothing to detect in this inert figure. We wonder why he should be placed so near a Pope.
Even for the invaders of Egypt, the Greeks and Romans, this old ancestral town of towns remained imposing and unique. They repaired its ruins, and built here temple after temple, in a style which hardly ever changes. Even in the ages of decadence everything that raised itself from the old, sacred soil, seemed to be impregnated a little with the ancient grandeur.
To imitate him without sharing his emotions or comprehending his thoughts, as the soulless artist of the decadence attempted, was without any doubt a grievous error. Surely also we may regret, not without reason, that in the evil days upon which he had fallen, the fair antique "Heiterkeit" and "Allgemeinheit" were beyond his reach.
So closely had I watched his decadence during the six years that I was able to say to myself one morning, 'There will be crape on his door before the day is out. And so there was." The bon-vivant laughed rather mechanically, but the other, he who makes verses so dainty that the world does not heed them, smiled softly and sympathetically to me and said: "You are right.
There is no question that people, especially people doing our sort of work, were much more awake in the Nineties, much more alive, much more keen about everything, even a fight, or above all a fight, if they thought a fight would clear the air. Those clever young men, self-appointed historians of a period they know only by hearsay, may deplore or envy its decadence.
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