Manito eBooks

The soil is saturated
with blood. People are always killing themselves or each other for
motives which, to an Englishman, are altogether outside the range of
comprehensibility. Shall I tell you about one of our most interesting
cases? I happen to be on the island at the time. There was a young
fellow here--an agreeable young fellow--an artist; he was rich; he took a
villa, and painted. We all liked him. Then, by degrees, he became
secretive and moody. Said he was studying mechanics. He told me himself
that much as he liked landscape painting he thought an artist--a real
artist, he said--ought to be versed in ancillary sciences; in
fortification, wood-carving, architecture, and so on. Leonardo da
Vinci, you know. Well, one day they could not get into his bedroom.
They broke open his door and discovered that he had constructed a
perfectly-formed guillotine; the knife had fallen; his head lay on one
side and his body on the other. You may well be surprised. I went
carefully into that case. He was in the best of health, with a
creditable artistic record behind him.


Pages:
352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376