"Indeed! And what sort of beasts will you tame?"
"Men!"
Not one of them understood me.
"Well, Mr. Poet," joked Muki Bagotay, "the ballad was a success; now let us see whether the picture also will be superlative."
"How do you want to see it?"
"So!" and with that he stuck his eye-glass into the corner of his nose.
"Then you're just mistaken!" said I, "for when I paint a portrait nobody is allowed in the room except myself and the sitter."
The whole company was amazed. Every one fancied that it would have been a public exhibition, and so they had all congregated together to see how a person's eye, mouth and ear came out. A large round table had been prepared for me, in order that a whole lot of them might sit around it with their hands on their elbows, and give me general directions as I went along: That eye a bit higher! that ringlet a little lower! A little more red here, and a little more white there! However, I declared plainly that I would not paint before a crowd; it was the rule in painting, I said. When portraits were being painted, nobody must be in the atelier but the painter and his model. Barabás,[11] too, always made that a rule.
[11] Michael Barabás, a famous Hungarian painter, born at Markosfalu in 1810.
My resolution produced an imposing effect on the company. It's a very nice thing when a man can do something which nobody else can! They had to agree that Bessy and I should sit alone in a little side room, which had only one window, and the lower part of even this window had to be covered by a Spanish screen so as to get a proper light. And nobody was to disturb us so long as the sitting lasted.