e and eating most of a mallard
as sanguine as a decollation of the Baptist. By the cheese Anitchkoff
seemed confident of my sympathy, and I, having found nothing amiss in
him except an imperfect enjoyment of the pleasures of the table, was
planning how least imprudently might be raised the topic of the Del
Puente Giorgione. But it was he who spoke first. At the coffee he asked
me with admirable simplicity what people said about the affair, and I
answered with equal candour.

"You too have wondered," he continued.

"Of course, but nothing worse," I replied.

Then with the hesitancy of a man approaching a dire chagrin, and yet with
a rueful appreciation of the humour of the predicament that I despair of
reproducing, he began:

"It happened about this way. When I first came to Italy and began to meet
the friends of Mantovani, they told me of an early Giorgione he owned but
rarely showed. He used to speak of it affectionately as 'il mio Zorzi,'
to distinguish it perhaps from the more important example he had sold to
one of our dilettante iron-masters. The little unfinished portrait I
heard of, from those whose opinion is sought, as a superlatively lovely
thing. It was mentioned with a certain awe; to have seen it was a
distinction. For years I hoped my time would come, but the opportunity
was provokingly delayed. How should you feel if Mrs. Warrener should show
you all her things but the great Botticelli?" I nodded understandingly.
Mrs. Warrener, for a two minutes' delay in an appointment, had debarred
me her Whistlers for a year.

"That's the way Mantovani treated me," Anitchkoff continued. "Whenever I
dared I asked for the 'Zorzi,' and he always put me off with a smile.
That mystified me, for I knew he took a paternal pride in my studies, but
I never got any more satisfactory answer from him than that the 'Zorzi'
was strong meat for the young; one must grow up to it, like S---- and
P---- and C---- (naming some of his closest disciples). These allusions
he made repeatedly and with a queer sardonic zest. Occasionally he would
volunteer the encouragement--for I had long ago dropped the
subject--'Cheer up, my boy; your turn will come.' When he so Quixotically
gave the picture to the Marquesa del Puente, it seemed, though, as if my
turn could never come, but I noted that he had been true to his doctrine
that the 'Zorzi' was only for the mature; the Del Puente was said to be
some years his senior. One knew exasperatingly l