"Certainly. It's Macbeth, a famous king of ancient times."
"And that one there with a sword in his hand?"
"Also a king, or a general, or a hero, or something of the kind--somebody that wants to fight. Perhaps David, or Saul, or Alexander the Great. That's not to be taken so exactly."
"And the lady with the flowers? She seems to be tearing them up."
"That one? Show her to me: Ophelia. Yes, that's Ophelia. Don't you know?"
"Yes. Why does she throw the leaves on the ground?"
Here the mother came to the rescue of her eldest son.
"Yes, Walter, you mustn't ask more questions than anybody can answer."
Walter did not ask any more questions, but he determined to get to the bottom of the matter at the first opportunity. His imagination roamed over immeasurable domains--such an insatiate conqueror was the little emperor Walter in his night-jacket!
He associated the heroes of his pictures with the doctor, who had been so friendly to him, and with his immortal Glorioso. The Peruvian story, too, furnished a few subjects for his empire. He married Telasco to Juliet; and the priests of the sun got their rights again. Master Pennewip received a new wig, but of gold-colored threads, on the model of the straw crown of a certain King Lear. Persons that he could see from the window were numbered among his subjects. He had to do something; and this foreign material was preferable to that in his immediate surroundings. Even Lady Macbeth, who was washing her hands and not looking particularly pleasing, seemed to him to be of a higher order than his mother or Juffrouw Laps.
In fact, for him those pictures were the greatest things in the world. He was carried away with the crowns, diadems, plumes, iron gratings over the faces, with the swords and the daggers with cross-hilts to swear on--with the trains and puff-sleeves and girdles with pendents of gold--and the pages. All this had nothing in common with his everyday surroundings. How is it possible, he thought, that anyone who has such beautiful pictures should sell them? The doctor must have inherited them!
Even if he had known that Lady Macbeth was the personification of crime, it would still have seemed to him a profanation to bring her into contact with the plebeian commonness around him.