He is not always critical. Genuineness and real worth never fail to impress him. Often he stands before a landscape, a city, a cathedral, as enthusiastic as any of the older school of travelers. The book is full of vivid descriptions, some of them almost poetic in their spirit and diction. But things must be what they pretend to be, or they will disgust him. Everywhere there is scorn for the mere echoer of the enthusiasm of others. He will not gush over an unworthy thing even if he knows the whole world has gushed over it. Da Vinci's "Last Supper," painted on a dilapidated wall and stained and scarred and dimmed, may once have been beautiful, he admits, but it is not so now. The pilgrims who stand before it "able to speak only in catchy ejaculations of rapture" fill him with wrath. "How can they see what is not visible?" The work of the old masters fills him always with indignation. They painted not Hebrews in their scriptural pieces, but Italians. "Their nauseous adulation of princely patrons was more prominent to me and claimed my attention more than the charms of color." "Raphael pictured such infernal villains as Catherine and Marie de Medicis seated in heaven conversing familiarly with the Virgin Mary and the angels (to say nothing of higher personages), and yet my friends abuse me because I am a little prejudiced against the old masters."
Here we have a note that was to become more and more emphatic in Mark Twain's work with every year he lived: his indignation at oppression and insincerity. The cathedrals of Italy lost their beauty for him when he saw the misery of the population. He stood before the Grand Duomo of Florence. "Like all other men I fell down and worshiped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive, and I said 'O sons of classic Italy, _is_ the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church?' Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in that cathedral."
Everywhere he strikes out at sentimentality. When he learns how Abelard deliberately sacrificed Héloïse to his own selfish ideals, he bursts out: "The tons of sentiment I have wasted on that unprincipled humbug in my ignorance! I shall throttle down my emotions hereafter, about this sort of people, until I have read them up and know whether they are entitled to any tearful attentions or not." He is eager to see a French "grissette," but having seen one, bursts out in true Artemus Ward fashion: "Aroint thee, wench! I sorrow for the vagabond student of the Latin Quarter now, even more than formerly I envied him. Thus topples to the earth another idol of my infancy." The story of Petrarch's love for Laura only fills him with pity for the outrageously treated "Mr. Laura," the unknown husband of the heroine, who bore the burden but got none of the glory, and when they tell the thrilling legend of the old medieval castle, he makes only the comment, "Splendid legend--splendid lie--drive on!"