confrere, you have
prejudices."

"You do not dare to say you would make profit from your own wife?"

"The virtuous Cato lent his wife to a friend. I love virtue, and I
cannot do better than imitate Cato. But to be serious,--I do not
fear you as a rival. You are good-looking, and I am ugly. But you are
irresolute, and I decisive. While you are uttering fine phrases, I shall
say, simply, 'I have a bon etat. Will you marry me?' So do your worst,
cher confrere. Au revoir, behind the scenes!"

So saying, Nicot rose, stretched his long arms and short legs, yawned
till he showed all his ragged teeth from ear to ear, pressed down his
cap on his shaggy head with an air of defiance, and casting over his
left shoulder a glance of triumph and malice at the indignant Glyndon,
sauntered out of the room.

Mervale burst into a violent fit of laughter. "See how your Viola is
estimated by your friend. A fine victory, to carry her off from the
ugliest dog between Lapland and the Calmucks."

Glyndon was yet too indignant to answer, when a new visitor arrived. It
was Zanoni himself. Mervale, on whom the appearance and aspect of this
personage imposed a kind of reluctant deference, which he was unwilling
to acknowledge, and still more to betray, nodded to Glyndon, and saying,
simply, "More when I see you again," left the painter and his unexpected
visitor.

"I see," said Zanoni, lifting the cloth from the canvas, "that you have
not slighted the advice I gave you. Courage, young artist; this is an
escape from the schools: this is full of the bold self-confidence of
real genius. You had no Nicot--no Mervale--at your elbow when this image
of true beauty was conceived!"

Charmed back to his art by this unlooked-for praise, Glyndon replied
modestly, "I thought well of my design till this morning; and then I was
disenchanted of my happy persuasion."

"Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labour, you were fatigued
with your employment."

"That is true. Shall I confess it? I began to miss the world without. It
seemed to me as if, while I lavished my heart and my youth upon visions
of beauty, I was losing the beautiful realities of actual life. And I
envied the merry fisherman, singing as he passed below my casement, and
the lover conversing with his mistress."

"And," said Zanoni, with an encouraging smile, "do you blame yourself
for the natural and necessary return to earth, in which even the most
habitual visitor of the Heave