One would like to know whether those people loved as we do, and what difference existed between their passions and our own.

One would like them to open their lips and tell their history, tell us everything they used to do, no matter how futile, and what their cares and pleasures used to be.

It is an irritating and seductive curiosity, a dreamy desire for knowledge, such as one feels regarding the past life of a mistress....

But they are deaf to the questions our eyes put to them, they remain dumb and motionless in their wooden frames, and we pass on.

The moths attack their canvases, but the latter are revarnished; and the pictures will smile on when we are buried and forgotten.