Has it ever happened to you, courteous reader, to meet a person with whom your personal relations brought you often in contact, and who, reserved and serious by nature as well as on account of his social position, differed from you, who are perhaps too vivacious and open; and on the one side you feared to displease him by your vivacity, and on the other you were annoyed by his reserve? In such a case, if certain allowance be made on both sides—as far as you are concerned by listening with attentive deference to his wise counsels, austere maxims, and high principles, and on his part by an indulgent consideration for your free and vivacious nature—has it not happened to you that insensibly and firmly a harmony of relation has established itself which it is difficult to break,—and this for the undeniable, however recondite reason, that there is a sympathy between entirely different natures which causes each to compensate for the other?
MY FRIENDSHIP WITH VENTURI.
In like manner as this may have happened to you, so it happened to me with Luigi Venturi, then private secretary of his Royal and Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Leopold II. He often came to my studio by order of the Grand Duke, for whom I was making a statuette of Dante and another of Beatrice. He took a liking to me, which I have returned sincerely, even till to-day; and he is the oldest and most affectionate of my friends. After the revolution of '59, with the loss of his high position he lost also a great portion of such friends as come with Fortune and flee with her. But neither the ingratitude of some nor the fickleness of others ever drew from him a lament. He was contented with those who remained, and I was one of them. Our long and intimate connection has at last harmonised our characters,—he making me more temperate, and I (as I dare to hope) making him more open and vivacious. His friendship, as well as that of others of whom I shall speak in the proper place, has strengthened my judgment and tempered my fancies. Trustworthy, honest, and sincere friends are a great fortune—and I have had such, and have kept them. To distinguish the good from the bad requires study, and we must learn how to get rid of chatterers and adulators.
PRINCE ANATOLIO DEMIDOFF.
And this warning I feel it my duty to give to young artists, for whom these memoirs are specially written. I have already said, in speaking of models, "Girls unaccompanied as models, no!" now I add, "Nor even married women without the express consent of their husbands." Here is a little incident which may serve as a lesson.
Prince Anatolio Demidoff often came to my studio. He gave vent to his annoyance at the delays and the infinite difficulties interposed by Bartolini in completing the groups and statues of the monument ordered by him in honour of the memory of his dead father. To listen to the Prince, he seemed to have a thousand good reasons; but the consequences he drew from them, and the bold, unjust measures which he proposed, I could not but think blameworthy, and I strove in every way to moderate him, and to dissuade him from carrying out his intentions. My frank and loyal defence of Bartolini, so far from exasperating him, as often happened when he was opposed, made him more kindly towards me, and he proposed to order of me a great work worthy, as he was pleased to say, of my genius. He had a thousand projects, and among them he spoke to me of a colossal statue of Napoleon I. He was at that time tenderly inclined toward the Bonaparte family. His pride in being connected with it, as well as the charms of the beautiful Princess, his wife, were in great measure the cause of this enthusiasm. He treated me with great kindness, invited me often to dinner and to his evening receptions, and talked very freely with me in regard to works that he wished me to make for him.
STATUETTE OF PRINCESS DEMIDOFF.
About this time the Princess came one day to my studio, and told me that she wished me to make her portrait—not merely a bust, but the whole figure, almost half the size of life. I answered that I should like much to make it, for I was persuaded that it would give the Prince pleasure; but she hastened to say that the Prince must know nothing about it. I had not sufficient presence of mind to reply that without his consent I could not undertake it—and I was wrong, I confess: but the Princess stood before me blandly insisting; and overcome by the beauty of the model, I agreed to make it and keep it a secret from the Prince. She gave me a number of sittings, and I was going on satisfactorily with the statuette, and had already a good likeness, when unexpectedly the Prince came one day to see me, and after exchanging a few words and taking a turn through the room, he stopped before the modelling-stand, on which was the clay of the statuette covered with wet cloths, and said—
"And what have you got here?"
"Nothing, your Excellency—nothing."