Cynical Artist 



of muscles and mantles, ought hardly to be mentioned 

 in the same breath with Rembrandt. 



In Brussels I visited its beautifully arranged nat- 

 ural history museum, especially rich in fossil re- 

 mains, then meeting for the first time Dr. Louis Dollo, 

 the excellent curator, with whom I had long corre- 

 sponded. I also refreshed my recollection of the weird 

 but fascinating Wiertz collection, much of it painted 

 in a spirit of ghastly cynicism. 



Two of the Wiertz paintings always impressed me 

 strongly. In the one entitled 'The Man of the 

 Future and the Things of the Past" a naturalist 

 holding in his open hand Napoleon and a batch of 

 marshals examines them through a magnifying glass 

 while a child standing by looks on in open-eyed won- 

 der. "A Scene in Hell" shows Napoleon with folded Napoleon 

 arms and unmoved face descending slowly to the 

 land of shades. Before him, filling all the background, 

 their faces dark with hate, are the hordes of men sent 

 to death by his unbridled ambition. Of course not 

 all the 3,700,000 victims, half of them French, could 

 be shown in the picture. Most are only hinted at; 

 and still behind, in my mind's eye, I saw the count- 

 less millions of those who might have been and are 

 not, the huge widening wedge of the possible descend- 

 ants of young men slain in battle! No wonder a 

 critic has said that the work of Napoleon was "to fill 

 Hell with heroes." 



3 



Having rejoined the others at Arlon, we at once 

 set out for Lorraine, meeting Dr. Albert Leon Gue- 

 rard at Metz, and later at Strasbourg my daughter 

 Edith, then on a tour around the world with Miss 



n 501 3 



