'I'm afraid you'll find very little here that's worthy your attention. May I venture to ask your name?'
'Never mind my name, sir,' the old gentleman said, with a blandness that contrasted oddly with the rough wording of his brusque sentences. 'Never you mind my name, I say,—what's that to you, pray? My name's not at all in question. I've come to see your pictures.'
'Are you a dealer, perhaps?' Hiram suggested, with another sigh at his own excessive frankness in depreciating what was after all his bread and butter—and a great deal more to him. 'You want to buy possibly?
'No, I don't want to buy,' the old gentleman answered flatly, with a certain mild and kindly fierceness. 'I don't want to buy certainly. I'm not a dealer; I'm an art-critic.'
'Oh, indeed,' Hiram said politely. The qualification is not one usually calculated to endear a visitor to a struggling young artist.
'And you, I should say by your accent, are an American. That's bad, to begin with. What on earth induced you to leave that cursed country of yours? Oh generation of vipers—don't misinterpret that much-mistaken word generation; it means merely son or offspring—who has warned you to flee from the wrath that is?'
Hiram smiled in spite of himself. 'Myself,' he said; 'my own inner prompting only.'
'Ha, that's better; so you fled from it.
You escaped from the city of destruction. You saved yourself from Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, well, having had the misfortune to be born an American, what better thing could you possibly do? Creditable, certainly, very creditable. And now, since you have come to Rome to paint, pray what sort of wares have you got to show me?'
Hiram pointed gravely to the unfinished Capture of Babylon.