"Not without finishing this portrait," returned Anastase, quite unmoved. "It is an exceedingly good likeness; and in case you should ever disappear—you know people sometimes do in revolutions—or if by any unlucky accident your beautiful neck should chance beneath that guillotine you just mentioned,—why, then, this canvas would be the most delightful souvenir of many pleasant mornings, would it not?"
"You are incorrigible," said Donna Tullia, with a slight laugh. "You cannot be serious for a moment."
"It is very hard to paint you when your expression changes so often," replied Anastase, calmly.
"I am not in a good humour for sitting to you this morning. I wish you would amuse me, Del Ferice. You generally can."
"I thought politics amused you—"
"They interest me. But Gouache's ideas are detestable."
"Will you not give us some of your own, Madame?" inquired the painter, stepping back from his canvas to get a better view of his work.
"Oh, mine are very simple," answered Donna Tullia. "Victor Emmanuel,
Garibaldi, and a free press."
"A combination of monarchy, republicanism, and popular education—not very interesting," remarked Gouache, still eyeing his picture.
"No; there would be nothing for you to paint, except portraits of the liberators—"