e a mantle of metallic
luster on the groups of English tourists in green veils and round hats,
who called them in order to offer them grain.

Josephina, with childish eagerness, left her husband in order to buy a
cone full of grain, and spreading it out in her gloved hands she
gathered the wards of St. Mark around her; they rested on the flowers of
her head, fluttering like fantastic crests, they hopped on her
shoulders, or lined up on her outstretched arms, they clung desperately
to her slight hips, trying to walk around her waist, and others, more
daring, as if possessed of human mischievousness, scratched her breast,
reached out their beaks striving to caress her ruddy, half-opened, lips
through the veil. She laughed, trembling at the tickling of the animated
cloud that rubbed against her body. Her husband watched her, laughing
too, and certain that no one but she would understand him, he called to
her in Spanish.

"My, but you are beautiful! I wish I could paint your picture! If it
weren't for the people, I would kiss you."

Venice was the scene of her happiest days. She lived quietly while her
husband worked, taking odd corners of the city for his models. When he
left the house, her placid calm was not disturbed by any troublesome
thought. This was painting, she was sure,--and not the conditions of
affairs in Rome, where he would shut himself up with shameless women who
were not afraid to pose stark naked. She loved him with a renewed
passion, she petted him with constant caresses. It was then that her
daughter was born, their only child.

Majestic Dona Emilia could not remain in Madrid when she learned that
she was going to be a grandmother. Her poor Josephina, in a foreign
land, with no one to take care of her but her husband, who had some
talent according to what people said, but who seemed to her rather
ordinary! At her son-in-law's expense, she made the trip to Venice and
there she stayed for several months, fuming against the city, which she
had never visited in her diplomatic travels. The distinguished lady
considered that no cities were inhabitable except the capitals that have
a court. Pshaw! Venice! A shabby town that no one liked but writers of
romanzas and decorators of fans, and where there were nothing higher
than consuls. She liked Rome with its Pope and kings. Besides, it made
her seasick to ride in the gondolas and she complained constantly of the
rheumatism, blaming it to the dampness of the l