Guido Reni The Archangel Michael painting

Guido Reni The Archangel Michael paintingFrancois Boucher The Rape of Europa paintingMichelangelo Buonarroti The Creation of Adam painting
stare at him until peremptorily told to keep their distance. The nightmare journey continued.
Arrival at the coast; a large military station; uniforms of leather and fur; black faces; flags; saluting. A pier with a large steamer alongside; barracks and a government house. A Negro anthropologist with vast spectacles. Impressions became more vivid and more brief; momentary illumination like flickering lightning. Someone earnestly trying to talk to Rip. Saying English words very slowly; reading to him from a book, familiar words with an extraordinary accent; a black man trying to read Shakespeare to Rip. Someone measured his skull with calipers. Growing blackness and despair; restraint and strangeness; moments of illumination rarer and more fantastic.
At night when Rip woke up and lay alone with his thoughts quite clear and desperate, he said: “This is not a dream. It is simply that I have gone mad.” Then more blackness and wildness.
The officers and officials came and went. There was a talk of sending him “home.”