498 PRÆTERITA-III

gave my mother’s five pounds to; but an infinitely pleasanter feeling from the gratitude of the overworn ballerina at Turin, for the gift of as many of my own. She was not the least pretty; and depended precariously on keeping able for her work on small pittance; but did that work well always; and looked nice,-near the footlights.

I noticed also curiously at this time, that while the drawings I did to please myself seemed to please nobody else, the little pen-and-ink sketches made for my father, merely to explain where I was, came always well;-one, of the sunset shining down a long street through a grove of bayonets, which he was to imagine moving to military music, is pleasant to me yet.¹ But, on the whole, Turin began at last to bore me as much as Bellinzona; so I thought it might be as well to get home. I drove to Susa on the last day of August, walked quietly with Couttet over the Cenis to Lans-le-bourg next day; and on 2nd September sent my mother my love, by telegram, for breakfast-time, on her birthday, getting answer of thanks back before twelve o’clock; and began to think there might be something in telegraphs, after all.

25. A number of unpleasant convictions were thus driven into my head, in that 1858 journey, like Jael’s nail through Sisera’s temples; or Tintoret’s arrow between St. Sebastian’s eyes:²-I must return a moment to Mr. Maurice and Deborah³ before going on to pleasanter matters. Maurice was not, I suppose, in the habit of keeping a skull on his chimney-piece, and looking at it before he went to sleep, as I had been, for a long while before that talk;⁴ or he would have felt that whether it was by nail, bullet, or little pin, mattered little when it was ordained that the crowned forehead should sink in slumber. And he would have known that Jael was only one of the forms of “Dira

¹ [This drawing has not been traced.]

² [See the description of the picture in the Scuola di San Rocco: Vol. XI. p. 419.]

³ [See above, p. 487.]

⁴ [Ruskin refers to the habit in Stones of Venice, vol. i., Appendix 17 (Vol. IX. p. 452); and see his “Scythian Banquet Song,” Vol. II. p. 57.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]