In one of the smaller rooms of the palace we came on a casket containing a necklace of great smoldering rubies and a pair of bracelets to match. They were as big as cranberries and as red as blood--as red as arterial blood. And when, on consulting the guidebook, we read the history of those rubies the sight of them brought a picture to our minds, for they had been a part of the wedding dowry of Marie Antoinette. Once on a time this necklace had spanned the slender white throat that was later to be sheared by the guillotine, and these bracelets had clasped the same white wrists that were roped together with an ell of hangman's hemp on the day the desolated queen rode, in her patched and shabby gown, to the Place de la Revolution. I had seen paintings in plenty and read descriptions galore of that last ride of the Widow Capet going to her death in the tumbril, with the priest at her side and her poor, fettered arms twisted behind her, and her white face bared to the jeers of the mob; but the physical presence of those precious useless baubles, which had cost so much and yet had bought so little for her, made more vivid to me than any picture or any story the most sublime tragedy of The Terror--the tragedy of those two bound hands. Chapter XXI Old Masters and Other Ruins It is naturally a fine thing for one, and gratifying, to acquire a thorough art education. Personally I do not in the least regret the time I gave and the study I devoted to acquiring mine. I regard those two weeks as having been well spent. I shall not do it soon again, however, for now I know all about art. Let others who have not enjoyed my advantages take up this study. Let others scour the art galleries of Europe seeking masterpieces. All of them contain masterpieces and most of them need scouring. As for me and mine, we shall go elsewhere. I love my art, but I am not fanatical on the subject. There is another side of my nature to which an appeal may be made. I can take my Old Masters or I can leave them be. That is the way I am organized--I have self-control. I shall not deny that the earlier stages of my art education were fraught with agreeable little surprises. Not soon shall I forget the flush of satisfaction which ran through me on learning that this man Dore's name was pronounced like the first two notes in the music scale, instead of like a Cape Cod fishing boat. And lingering in my mind as a fragrant memory is the day when I first discovered that Spagnoletto was neither a musical instrument nor something to be served au gratin and eaten with a fork. Such acquirements as these are very precious to me.