"I have got so used to the amount of luxury you see about you; I did, indeed, once think of beginning a large work without there in the square, eating my artichoke by the fountain at noon, and sleeping at night at the foot of my work. But one is effeminate and fears the weather, and cowardly, and afraid of the gossipping. Besides, I cannot do without the wine or--"
"But if you had an opportunity of working in marble without any discomfort to yourself," interrupted Theodore.
The sick man started up excitedly.
"Do you know what you are doing with your thoughtless questions?" he cried, and his eyes sparkled. "Look in that corner; there have I cast one on the top of the other, all that used to come to me with such questions. The dust is burying these impertinent babblers day by day, and my eyes know already that it is an unpardonable sin for them to wander towards them. And yet I was fool enough to allow myself to hope again when they said that models were to be sent in for the monument to the last Pope. For a couple of weeks I thought and dreamt of nothing else, and worked it out with energy, and was myself satisfied with my work. Fool that I was, to be deluded by such fancies. That was yesterday. I wrapped the model in a cloth, and bore it myself all the way to the Cardinal Secretary of State,--for my soul hung upon it, and I thought another might let it fall. And then I was obliged to give the rascally servants civil words and my last scudo before they would even permit me to enter. Inside it was all black and red and violet, with their reverences' stockings, and they stared at me from head to foot, because I had run out of my studio without thinking of taking off my old working-jacket. I thought, 'Let them stare;' took courage, and stepped with a bow and my work before his eminence. I saw at once that he was in a bad temper, and that his neighbour had already tasted some of its effects. I told him shortly why I was there, and begged to be permitted to show my sketch. The old fellow nodded, after his custom, cast a glance over the figures, which looked doubly noble amongst all those rogues, and said, 'Not bad. But 'twont do, 'twont do; wants noblesse, my son, and more direct reference to the holy church. Take it home and beat it up. The clay is wet still.' I stood like a man in a madhouse. Beat it up! as if my loftiest ideas were broth. Whilst I stood there, unable to utter a word, up stepped the monsignori, stuck their learned spectacles on their noses, and abused it before and behind till they did not leave a nail's breadth without a spot of blame, just as when the old wolf half kills a sheep, and then hands it over to her whelps to worry and whet their milk-teeth upon. If I could only have spoken and described all that had passed through my brain whilst I was at work on the model, perhaps the old man might have looked at it differently, for they say that he has a good-enough head. But just at this unlucky moment he was full of ill temper, and poured it all out over me. So at last I got tired of this chattering, this whizzing of children's painted bird-bolts, not one of which hit the matter, and every one the man, for they pricked me like needles. Another would have shaken himself laughingly, and perhaps have won the day. But I--how was I to do it? My father did not make much talk over his cameos, and when he died, Rome was neither more agitated nor stiller, and I have ever kept out of the way of your learned men; so I stole away from them this time too, and swore never to have aught to do with them again. As I passed along the Repelta I got into a rage, and threw my model into the Tiber. 'Let it melt there,' said I to myself; and I felt relieved, and took a fancy to go and walk about the campagna. There you found me."
"You must not abuse the savant," said Theodore, laughingly, after a pause, in order to bring the other, who had sunk into a reverie, back to the subject. "Your instinct did not deceive you when you felt an antipathy to my being near you. For I am here in Rome for the purpose of poking about old parchments, and digging out long-buried matters, about which but few are interested. Histories of the old Italian towers, state papers, and judicial reports. And so we are doubly-separated individuals."
"You may be, and do what you like," said Bianchi, quickly, and half aside. "You are good and handsome, and a German."
"You little know German learning. It is even more horrible than the Roman. I myself have a secret terror of it. It has a power of glaring at feeble souls, that turns them into stone, like those poor rogues who gazed on the face of the Medusa."
"The Medusa?"
"You must know her better than I do. Have you not thrown her away there in the corner and left her, half begun and half ended, cut upon the shells on your work-table?"
"I do not know much about it. When I was quite a boy, my father gave me a part of it to work at. I loved the head, for I had but little pleasure, and the dark death in the beautiful woman's face fascinated me. Afterwards I saw the circular one in the villa Ludovisi, and never rested until I had made a copy of it as well as I could at home. It is more human and passionate there, than in the Grecian one, where it is reduced to a mere mask. I have never asked what they meant by it, and reading annoys me."