“My dear Laura, I am grieved to prevent your hearing this worthy man’s recital, but unfortunately it only wants five minutes of the time at which I promised to be with the Consul.”
“How long shall you be obliged to stay with him?” inquired his wife.
“Less than half-an-hour, perhaps twenty-five minutes would suffice,” was the reply; “shall I leave you here and come back for you before five o’clock?”
“There are several pictures the Signora has not yet examined,” suggested the old man. Thus urged, Laura consented to remain; an idea which she would not confess even to her husband, so wild and fanciful did she feel it to be, had taken possession of her, and her curiosity in regard to the mysterious artist had become redoubled.
CHAPTER LIV.—TREATS OF A METAMORPHOSIS NOT DESCRIBED BY OVID.
“You were going to tell me some anecdote,” Laura observed as Leicester quitted the studio.
The Cicerone, who was a venerable-looking old man with grey hair and a thoroughly Italian cast of features, placed a chair for the lady before a view in Venice, at which she had not yet looked, and then resumed—
“Favorisca di sedersi la prego Signora. I was going to relate how the Signore whom I serve generously rescued me from ruin; but to do so I must trouble the Eccellenza with a few particulars of my own history. I was originally educated as a painter, but although I was a correct copyist, and possessed some skill in mixing colours, I had not the afflatus, the inexplicable, the divine gift of genius, which cannot be acquired. Look at these pictures,” he continued, warming into enthusiasm as lie pointed to the paintings from the “Giaour”; “in my prime I could execute better than that, my colouring was richer and smoother, my shades less hard and abrupt, though to acquire that skill had cost me fifteen years’ constant study; but alas! the mind was wanting. I could execute but I could not conceive—my pictures would never have entranced any one as you were entranced before those great soul-creations!” He paused, sighed deeply, then resumed: “So I grew poor, I had a wife and children to support, and I bent my pride to become a scene-painter at the Fenice Theatre. I worked there twenty long years, and then from over use my eyesight grew dim, and they discarded me. After that I was employed by the great painter of the day, Signore B—elli, to prepare canvas and mix colours for the young artists whom he instructed. A year and a half ago a pupil came to study with him—he was a stranger——”