torted, utterly miserable and woebegone. "Ah! Salvator!"
said Antonio, "what advantage has it been to me that you have helped me
to rise to a level far beyond my expectations, that I am now
overwhelmed with praise and honour, that the prospect of a most
successful artistic career is opening out before me? Oh! I am utterly
miserable, for the picture to which, next to you, my dear sir, I owe my
great triumph, has proved the source of my lasting misfortune."

"Stop!" replied Salvator, "don't sin against either your art or your
picture. I don't believe a word about the terrible misfortune which,
you say, has befallen you. You are in love, and I presume you can't get
all your wishes gratified at once, on the spur of the moment; that's
all it is. Lovers are like children; they scream and cry if anybody
only just touches their doll. Have done, I pray you, with that
lamentation, for I tell you I can't do with it. Come now, sit yourself
down there and quietly tell me all about your fair Magdalene, and give
me the history of your love affair, and let me know what are the stones
of offence that we have to remove, for I promise you my help
beforehand. The more adventurous the schemes are which we shall have to
undertake, the more I shall like them. In fact, my blood is coursing
hotly in my veins again, and my regimen requires that I engage in a few
wild pranks. But go on with your story, Antonio, and as I said, let's
have it quietly without any sighs and lamentations, without any Ohs!
and Ahs!"

Antonio took his seat on the stool which Salvator had pushed up to the
easel at which he was working, and began as follows:--

"There is a high house in the Via Ripetta,[2.15] with a balcony which
projects far over the street so as at once to strike the eye of any one
entering through the Porta del Popolo, and there dwells perhaps the
most whimsical oddity in all Rome,--an old bachelor with every fault
that belongs to that class of persons--avaricious, vain, anxious to
appear young, amorous, foppish. He is tall, as thin as a switch, wears
a gay Spanish costume, a sandy wig, a conical hat, leather gauntlets, a
rapier at his side"----

"Stop, stop!" cried Salvator, interrupting him, "excuse me a minute or
two, Antonio." Then, turning about the picture at which he was
painting, he seized his charcoal and in a few free bold strokes
sketched on the back side of the canvas the eccentric old gentleman
whom he had seen behaving like a crazed ma