This done, the two go out together, Oliver leaving word with the barber that his sons can get their meal for themselves when they return, but that Achille is to meet them at the Painted Inn at the hour of noon. Then striding through the narrow alleys into which the sun is but now finding its way, the two pass to the pleasanter portion of the town.
Here the painter takes leave of the Englishman, whispering: “Don’t lose sight of Vasco.”
“While you will do my errand?” suggests Chester wistfully.
“Certainly. I have a good excuse for my interview with Doña Hermoine. Her father only leaves Brussels at noon to-day. Alva will not be here until late this evening, and would wish word of this given to his daughter,” answers Oliver, and takes his way toward the Esplanade, beyond which lies the Citadel.
Going once more to the Painted Inn, Chester discovers that it is now the scene of unusual animation.
The wine room is crowded so that he can hardly get a seat to order his breakfast, appetite having by this time obtained temporary ascendency over love. By some deft questioning and pumping of the waiter who attends him, the Englishman soon learns that the man [[72]]he is in search of only left his late carouse at three o’clock in the morning, and has not yet arisen; probably thinking that retirement will best fit him for a supremely great feat at the shrine of Bacchus.
The conversation at the neighboring tables naturally turns upon the drinking bout. The room is full of burghers and artists, some of whom have come to enjoy the artist’s triumph, others to sorrow at the genius that is being killed with wine. There is also a goodly delegation of his creditors, who are here with anxiety in their hearts and on their lips, for Frans Floris’s life is worth a large sum to them on account of the paintings his facile brush creates; but Frans Floris dead is of very little use to them, and they fear that some day he will kill himself by the enormous quantity of wine he may imbibe in his effort to place his competitors beneath the table.
“Ah, Mijn Heer Dirk Coornhert, this is a sad day,” remarks a fat, adipose citizen, whose smell of the malt-house proclaims the brewer.
“Yes,” replies a man evidently of artistic tastes and education. “Have you seen the poem I’ve printed to warn Floris of the danger of his dissolute habits, not only to his genius but to his life? I read it to him last night. It was an inspiration in which I depicted a dream wherein the spirit of Albert Durer appeared to me and spoke in melancholy and ghostly tones of the spirit sadness that was brought to him even after a hundred years in the other world by an artist of Floris’s ability becoming a drunkard.”
“And did it reform him?” jeers the other.