“Nay, sweet hostess; see you not 'tis his poverty he would screen from view?”
“And the more fool he! Are all our hearts as ill as his? A might give us a trial first, anyway.”
“How you speak of him. Why, his case is mine; and your countryman to boot.”
“Oh, we Siennese love strangers. His case yours? Nay, 'tis just the contrary. You are the comeliest youth ever lodged in this house; hair like gold: he is a dark, sour-visaged loon. Besides, you know how to take a woman on her better side; but not he. Natheless, I wish he would not starve to death in my house, to get me a bad name. Anyway, one starveling is enough in any house. You are far from home, and it is for me, which am the mistress here, to number your meals—for me and the Dutch wife, your mother, that is far away: we two women shall settle that matter. Mind thou thine own business, being a man, and leave cooking and the like to us, that are in the world for little else that I see but to roast fowls, and suckle men at starting, and sweep their grownup cobwebs.”
“Dear kind dame, in sooth you do often put me in mind of my mother that is far away.”
“All the better; I'll put you more in mind of her before I have done with you.” And the honest soul beamed with pleasure.
Gerard not being an egotist, nor blinded by female partialities, saw his own grief in poor proud Pietro; and the more he thought of it the more he resolved to share his humble means with that unlucky artist; Pietro's sympathy would repay him. He tried to waylay him; but without success.
One day he heard a groaning in the room. He knocked at the door, but received no answer. He knocked again. A surly voice bade him enter.
He obeyed somewhat timidly, and entered a garret furnished with a chair, a picture, face to wall, an iron basin, an easel, and a long chest, on which was coiled a haggard young man with a wonderfully bright eye. Anything more like a coiled cobra ripe for striking the first comer was never seen.
“Good Signor Pietro,” said Gerard, “forgive me that, weary of my own solitude, I intrude on yours; but I am your nighest neighbour in this house, and methinks your brother in fortune. I am an artist too.”