"I know you want to see the Riggs armor most of all," she said, "and Margaret and James have been talking a lot about the Morgan collection and the Ethels told me on the way in that they had seen in the Sunday papers reproductions of some of the pictures in the Altman collections and they want to see the originals. We can see all those later on, but first we will look for a minute at a very famous picture by a Frenchwoman, Rosa Bonheur."
"Oh, I remember about her," said Helen. "She used to wear men"s clothes when she was working in her studio. She said skirts bothered her."
"I should think they would," said James. "I remember about her, too. She made a specialty of animals and sometimes she had lions and other wild animals from some Zoo, and let them wander about. She needed to be dressed so she could skip lively if they made any demonstration!"
"Those are huge horses, aren"t they," said Ethel Blue, as they stood before the "Horse Fair."
"They look as if they were "feeling gayly," as the North Carolina mountaineers say," quoted Dorothy.
"What is it all about?" asked Miss Graham.
"Why, I don"t know," answered Ethel Blue slowly. "Is it about anything in particular? Isn"t it just a lot of horses being taken to a Horse Fair for exhibition?"
Miss Graham nodded and said that that was probably all there was to it.
Then she led them to a picture by a French artist, Meissonier.
"I spot Napoleon," said Tom promptly, as they took up their position.
"This is called "Friedland, 1807,"" said Miss Graham.
Before she could ask any question or make any suggestion about the picture, Helen had explained "Friedland."
"That was one of Napoleon"s famous battles. Here he defeated the Russians and Prussians."
"Eighteen hundred and seven?" repeated James. "Why, Napoleon was at the very height of his power then, wasn"t he?"
"He looks it," said Margaret. "Doesn"t he look as if he were the lord of the world? And how those men around him gaze at him with adoration! He certainly had a wonderful ability for making himself beloved by his soldiers!"
Miss Graham had been listening to these comments with the greatest interest.
"What difference do you see between this picture and the "Horse Fair"?"
she asked.
They looked carefully at the picture before them and Ethel Blue scampered back to refresh her memory on the "Horse Fair."
"There isn"t any more action in one than the other," said James, "though, of course, it"s different."
"But this one makes me think a lot about a great man," added his sister.
"And you want to know what it"s all about," exclaimed Ethel Brown.
"You feel as if there must be some story about this one," said Ethel Blue, returning from her expedition to the "Horse Fair."
"That"s just the point," said Miss Graham, patting her shoulder, "There"s no especial appeal to the imagination in the "Horse Fair." You just see horses going to any horse fair in northern France, and there"s nothing to tell you that one horse has won a ploughing match and that another is a candidate for a blue ribbon because of his great weight. But here you realize at once that Napoleon was a man to command attention. You want to know what he has been doing. You feel that there is some good reason for the evident admiration of his soldiers. Those two pictures are examples of two different cla.s.ses of pictures. The "Horse Fair" you might call a sketch in a traveller"s note book. The Napoleon picture is an ill.u.s.tration in a story."
The young people thought over all this and nodded their agreement.
"Now come with me and see this picture of a pretty girl."
Miss Graham led the way to the Morgan collection and they looked into the winning face of "Miss Farren." She seemed to be moving swiftly across the canvas, her dress and cloak streaming behind her from the speed of her motion.
"She"s a pretty girl," said Roger, with his hand on his heart. Tom nodded in agreement, but James shook his head.
"She looks silly," he said sternly.
"There isn"t any story to her picture, I"m sure," said Helen. "That"s just a portrait."
"But may not a portrait indicate something of the character of the sitter?" asked Miss Graham.
"It ought to," returned Margaret, "and I should think there was something of this girl"s character in the portrait, but there"s nothing to show that this might be the ill.u.s.tration of a story."
"Unless it were the frontispiece, showing the picture of the heroine,"
said Roger.
"But the heroine doing nothing that is told about in the story," insisted Helen.
Miss Graham made no comment on these criticisms but led the way to another picture, also of a girl, but this time of a girl in the dress of a peasant and not handsomely arrayed as was Miss Farren.
"There is a bigger difference than clothes between these two," said Della, "but I don"t know just what it is. This girl isn"t pretty like Miss Farren."
"Do you know who this is?" asked Miss Daisy.
"Somebody who is thinking a lot," said Ethel Brown.
"She is seeing things in her mind," said Ethel Blue.
"Who is the most famous girl in history, who did that?" asked Miss Graham.
"Jeanne d"Arc," said Helen. "She saw visions that inspired her to be a leader of men in the army and she brought about the coronation of her king when he was kept from his throne by the English who held Paris and a large part of France."
"She is seeing visions now," whispered Ethel Blue, clinging to Miss Graham"s arm.
Miss Graham gently smoothed the fingers that were tensely closed over the sleeve of her jacket.
"Why do you suppose Helen told us about Jeanne d"Arc just now?" she asked.
"Because Helen just naturally knows all the history there is to be known," said Roger, joking his sister in brotherly fashion.
Helen flushed and murmured something that sounded like, "I thought you"d like to know why she looked like that."
"There is something more than just her character and her disposition in that picture," said Margaret.
"If a single picture can be a story picture, I should think this was a story picture as much as the Napoleon one," said Tom.
Again Miss Daisy nodded her approval.
"I call it a story picture," she said. "Helen felt that it was, immediately, and that is why she told us something of the story of Jeanne d"Arc."
"Most landscapes must be just note book pictures, then," guessed Ethel Brown.