dejection of that
huge giant who wandered about as peevish as a sick man. She threw her
arms around him, kissed his forehead, made a thousand gracious efforts
to bring a faint smile to his face. "Who loved him? His Josephina. His
_Maja_ but not his _Maja Desnuda;_ that was over forever. He must never
think of those horrible things. A decent painter does not think of them.
What would all her friends say? There were many pretty things to paint
in the world. They must live in each other's love, without his
displeasing her with his hateful whims. His affection for the nude was a
shameful remnant of his Bohemian days."

And Renovales, won over by his wife's petting, made peace,--tried to
forget his work and smiled with the resignation of a slave who loves
his chain because it assures him peace and life.

They returned to Rome at the beginning of the fall. Renovales began his
work for the contractor, but after a few months the latter seemed
dissatisfied. Not that Signor Mariano was losing power, not at all, but
his agents complained of a certain monotony in the subjects of his
works. The dealer advised him to travel; he might stay awhile in Umbria,
painting peasants in ascetic landscapes, or old churches; he might--and
this was the best thing to do--move to Venice. How much Signor Mariano
could accomplish in those canals! And it was thus that the idea of
leaving Rome first came to the painter.

Josephina did not object. That daily round of receptions in the
countless embassies and legations was beginning to bore her. Now that
the charm of the first impressions had disappeared, Josephina noticed
that the great ladies treated her with an annoying condescension as if
she had descended from her rank in marrying an artist. Besides, the
younger men in the embassies, the attaches of different nationalities,
some light, some dark, who sought relief from their celibacy without
going outside diplomatic society, were disgracefully impudent as they
danced with her or went through the figures of a cotillion, as if they
considered her an easy conquest, seeing her married to an artist who
could not display an ugly uniform in the drawing rooms. They made
cynical declarations to her in English or German and she had to keep her
temper, smiling and biting her lips, close to Renovales, who did not
understand a word and showed his satisfaction at the attentions of which
his wife was the object on the part of the fashionable youths whose
manne