The Contessa smiled.
“But he has painted the human countenance a great deal? I mean the faces of ladies. There were several of nymphs in his Academy picture this year—beautiful women.”
“The Emperor” smiled and shook his head.
“On’y or’nary models, my lady. He made ’em look beautiful. That’s art, my lady.”
“Then he had sitters for that picture?” she asked, rather eagerly.
“Oh yes, my lady; but Lor’ bless you! it isn’t much you’d think of them. He’s a doing a picture now—a tayblow about Juno making a discovery over something. Her good man wasn’t quite what he ought to have been, my lady, and she’s in a reg’lar rage.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, my lady; and he tried all the reg’lar lady models—spent no end on ’em, but they none of ’em wouldn’t do.”
“Not beautiful enough?”
“He didn’t think so, my lady, though, as I told him, it was too much to expeck to get one as was perfeck. You see in art, to make our best studies, we has to do a deal of patching.”