Cloux
Andrea Salaino—Why did I adopt him in the first place?
That’s an easy answer: because I loved him!
What a waif Salai was! I took him into my household, my studio, twenty-some years ago. It can’t be possible that so much time has lapsed.
He stole...stole shirts, shoes, brushes, gold leaf. He stole gold leaf and sold it. He took money. I was right to christen him “Salai.” It took months to straighten him out...if I really did. Yellow-headed, curly-headed, tall, foolish, loveable... when he puts his arm around me...
He is a capable artist, incapable of continuous effort; perhaps time can change him but I doubt it.
Now that he is gone...I often think I hear his voice... I think, ah, he has come back for a while...
The King and Queen have asked me how I had hoped to cast Il Cavallo, so I placed my drawings on tables in the salon, and we walked from one to another and I explained them.
“Mon Père,” Francis mumbled, as he examines drawings and sketches, “Mon Père...these are workable.”