| Returning from the most recent portrait, into the past, and passing from the head of the staircase through the gallery towards the door of my scriptorium, I counted the forefathers of the Gardens: seven in all, whose eyes were following me from the wall at regular intervals. One shouldn't be misled into concluding that the oldest painting, from napoleontic times, marks the upstart of a distinguished and heraldic family chronicle. In fact fate has bestowed on me an older brother with a distaste for red lentils, who by notarial act owns the complete collection of family portraits, presumably in a dank loft, while the few canvasses his scarce interest in 'such things as art' left me are nothing much to vant about: less fortunate youth portraits, doublets or unfinished studies for the definite paintings. Satisfactorily, the Gardens had succeeded in procreating and upholding themselves in one single line through the past century. In those rare instants that biblical lust had made one or two additions to this line, these siblings, fully conscious of the tradition, either spontaneously chose the monastic mode of living, or succumbed to the charms of a maladie galante in a spa resort, far from the ancestral hearth and olden Harlem. |
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| ERWIN, the beginning of chapter III |
| [This site has been constructed with help from the Dutch artist Marique de Bree.] |
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