s
were, yet among the five thousand of them living in the town, besides
countless black hogs, they owned over two hundred and fifty donkeys and
mules, the majority donkeys of the longest-eared, smallest-body breed
you can conceive. Costing little if any thing to support them, they were
excellent labor-saving machines, and did three quarters of the work that
in our country would have been done by hod and wheelbarrow labor. Very
sure-footed, they were well calculated for traveling the mountain-roads
around; and with their enormous saddles, a direct copy of those now used
in Egypt, of course attracted the attention of the two animal-painters,
who determined to secure a good specimen, and make a sketch of donkey
and saddle.

The most comical-looking one in the town belonged to a cross,
ill-tempered, ugly brute of a hunchback, who, as soon as he learned that
the artists wanted to paint him, asked such a price for his loan that
they found themselves obliged to give up all hopes of taking his
portrait. One morning, as Caper was walking out of the inn-door, he
nearly tumbled over a little, sun-burnt, diminutive donkey that had a
saddle on his back, resembling, with this on him, a broken-backed
rabbit. Caper was charmed; and as he stood there lost in admiration, a
poor little lame boy came limping up, and catching Long Ears by the rope
halter, was leading him away, when the artist stopped him and asked him
whom it belonged to. The small boy, probably not understanding Caper, or
afraid of him, made no answer, but resolutely pulled away the donkey to
a gateway leading into a garden, at the end of which was a half-ruined
old house. Our artist followed him in, when, raising his eyes toward the
house, he saw leaning from one of the windows, her figure marked boldly
against the dark gray of the house, a strikingly beautiful woman. There
was an air of neatness in her dress, a certain care of her hair, that
was an improvement over any of the other female Segnians he had yet
seen.

'Can you tell me,' said Caper, pointing to the donkey, 'who owns that
animal?'

'_Padrone mio_, I own him,' said the woman.

'I want to paint him.'

'_Do_ you?' replied the beauty, whose name Caper learned was Margarita;
and she asked this with a very astonished look.

'I do, indeed I do. It will not hurt him.'

'No, I don't believe it will. He is very ugly and sun-burnt. I think it
will improve him,' said Margarita confidently.

Caper didn't see ho