rely
cultivated your excellent judgment as a critic, but must have wielded
the brush as well."

"You will remember," rejoined Antonio, "how I told you, my dear sir,
when you were just about coming to yourself again after your long
unconsciousness, that I had several things to tell you which lay heavy
on my mind. Now is the time for me to unfold all my heart to you. You
must know then, that though I am called Antonio Scacciati, the
chirurgeon, who opened the vein in your arm for you, I belong also
entirely to art--to the art which, after bidding eternal farewell to my
hateful trade, I intend to devote myself for once and for all."

"Ho! ho!" exclaimed Salvator, "Ho! ho! Antonio, weigh well what you are
about to do. You are a clever chirurgeon, and perhaps will never be
anything more than a bungling painter all your life long; for, with
your permission, as young as you are, you are decidedly too old to
begin to use the charcoal now. Believe me, a man's whole lifetime is
scarce long enough to acquire a knowledge of the True--still less the
practical ability to represent it."

"Ah! but, my dear sir," replied Antonio, smiling blandly, "don't
imagine that I should now have come to entertain the foolish idea of
taking up the difficult art of painting had I not practised it already
on every possible occasion from my very childhood. In spite of the fact
that my father obstinately kept me away from everything connected with
art, yet Heaven was graciously pleased to throw me in the way of some
celebrated artists. I must tell you that the great Annibal[2.1]
interested himself in the orphan boy, and also that I may with justice
call myself Guido Reni's[2.2] pupil."

"Well then," said Salvator somewhat sharply, a way of speaking he
sometimes had, "well then, my good Antonio, you have indeed had great
masters, and so it cannot fail but that, without detriment to your
surgical practice, you must have been a great pupil. Only I don't
understand how you, a faithful disciple of the gentle, elegant Guido,
whom you perhaps outdo in elegance in your own pictures--for pupils do
do those sort of things in their enthusiasm--how you can find any
pleasure in my productions, and can really regard me as a master in the
Art."

At these words, which indeed sounded a good deal like derisive mockery,
the hot blood rushed into the young man's face.

"Oh, let me lay aside all the diffidence which generally keeps my lips
closed," he said, "and let