"And father, look at these heights around us, and on the western shore-these bold rocks with their summits all covered with spreading trees. How grandly they set off the picture!"
"If I were a painter, I know no scene that I would choose to portray, rather than this."
"Since you respect and love art so highly, father, why did you not learn this?"
"I was too busy in my youth, Stella."
"Who of all you know is best in this art?"
"I know a great many excellent ones-many who excel in landscape painting-many who are good in historic pictures, but of all whom I know, the one is undoubtedly the greatest, the one who excels all others in mingled grandeur and loveliness of conception, and who approaches nearest to the grand old masters is he-the artist who saved us from death—Mario."
"Mario!"
"Yes, and if he had not been guilty of such great presumption, my palace and my esteem would have been thrown open to him always-first, because he is chief of artists, and especially because he saved my darling's life."
"Yet is he so presumptuous, my father?"
"My daughter! Stella Borelloni, can an obscure man aspire to the hand of the fairest in Tuscany?"