most beautiful and amiable niece, named Marianna--is it so? All the
young men of the city are so smitten with love that they stupidly do
nothing but run up and down the Via Ripetta, almost dislocating their
necks in their efforts to look up at your balcony for a sight of your
sweet Marianna, to snatch a single glance from her heavenly eyes."

Suddenly all the charming simpers, all the good humour which had been
called up into the old gentleman's face by the good wine, were gone.
Looking gloomily before him, he said sharply, "Ah! that's an instance
of the corruption of our abandoned young men. They fix their infernal
eyes, there probate seducers, upon mere children. For I tell you, my
good sir, that my niece Marianna is quite a child, quite a child, only
just outgrown her nurse's care."

Salvator turned the conversation upon something else; the old gentleman
recovered himself. But just as he, his face again radiant with
sunshine, was on the point of putting the full wine-cup to his lips,
Salvator began anew. "But pray tell me, my dear sir, if it is indeed
true that your niece, with her sixteen summers, really has such
beautiful auburn hair, and eyes so full of heaven's own loveliness and
joy, as has Antonio's 'Magdalene?' It is generally maintained that she
has."

"I don't know," replied the old gentleman, still more sharply than
before, "I don't know. But let us leave my niece in peace; rather let
us exchange a few instructive words on the noble subject of art, as
your fine picture here of itself invites me to do."

Always when Capuzzi raised the wine-cup to his lips to take a good
draught, Salvator began anew to talk about the beautiful Marianna, so
that at last the old gentleman leapt from his chair in a perfect
passion, banged the cup down upon the table and almost broke it,
screaming in a high shrill voice, "By the infernal pit of Pluto! by all
the furies! you will turn my wine into poison--into poison I tell you.
But I see through you, you and your fine friend Signor Antonio, you
think to make sport of me. But you'll find yourselves deceived Pay me
the ten ducats you owe me immediately, and then I will leave you and
your associate, that barber-fellow Antonio, to make your way to the
devil."

Salvator shouted, as if mastered by the most violent rage, "What! you
have the audacity to treat me in this way in my own house! Do you think
I'm going to pay you ten ducats for that rotten box; the woodworms
have long