tures, in the worst possible style and taste. Years
afterwards, Madelon revisited the studio, where the black-
bearded friendly American, grown a little bent and a little
grey, was still stepping backwards and forwards before the
same easel standing in the old place; orange and pomegranate
trees still bloomed in the windows; footsteps still passed up
and down the long corridor outside where her light childish
ones had so often echoed; the old properties hung about on the
walls; and there, amongst dusty rolls piled up in a corner,
Madelon came upon more than one portrait of herself, a pale-
faced, curly-headed child, who looked out at her from the
canvas with wistful brown eyes that seemed full of the
thoughts that at that time had begun to agitate her poor
little brain. How the sight of them brought back the old
vanished days! How it stirred within her sudden tender
recollections of the quiet hours when, dressed out in some
quaint head-gear, or _contadina_ costume, or merely in her own
everyday frock, she had sat perched up on a high stool, or on
a pile of boxes, dreaming to herself, or listening to the talk
between the two men.

"That man is a fool," the American would exclaim, dashing his
brush across a whole morning's work; "that man is a
presumptuous fool who, here in Florence, here where those
others have lived and died, dares to stand before an easel and
imagine that he can paint--and I have been that man!" He was
wont to grow noisy and loquacious over his failures--not moody
and dumb, as some men do.

"You concern yourself too much," M. Linders would reply
calmly, putting the finishing touch to Madelon as a _bergere_
standing in the midst of a flock of sheep, and a green
landscape--like the enlarged top of a _bonbonniere_. "You are too
ambitious, _mon cher_--you are little, and want to be great--hence
your discomfort; whilst I, who am little, and know it, remain
content."

"May I be spared such content!" growled the other, who was
daily exasperated by the atrocities his friend produced by way
of pictures. It was beyond his comprehension how any man could
paint such to his disgrace, and then calmly contemplate them
as the work of his own hands. "Heaven preserve me from such
content, I say!"

"But it is there you are all in the wrong," says M. Linders,
quite unmoved by his companion's uncomplimentary energy. "You
agitate, you disturb yourself with the idea that some day you
will become something great--yo