They are both so good and sensible, if they
would only understand one another. At any rate, here she is, in
high state at the right hand of the bed. She is dressed in black,
for she has lost her husband some few years previously, but I do not
believe a smarter, sprier old lady for her years could be found in
Palestine, nor yet that either Giovanni d'Enrico or Giacomo Ferro
could have conceived or executed such a character. The sacristan
wanted to have it that she was not a woman at all, but was a
portrait of St. Joachim, the Virgin's father. "Sembra una donna,"
he pleaded more than once, "ma non e donna." Surely, however, in
works of art even more than in other things, there is no "is" but
seeming, and if a figure seems female it must be taken as such.
Besides, I asked one of the leading doctors at Varallo whether the
figure was man or woman. He said it was evident I was not married,
for that if I had been I should have seen at once that she was not
only a woman but a mother-in-law of the first magnitude, or, as he
called it, "una suocera tremenda," and this without knowing that I
wanted her to be a mother-in-law myself.
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