opportunity for personal distinction than had been afforded him in spending an afternoon on horseback, listening to the singing of bullets overhead. His amateur soldiering was over long ago, but he was strong, brave, and intelligent, and if he had been convinced that a second and more radical revolution could accomplish any good result he would have been capable of devoting himself to its cause with a single-heartedness not usual in these days. But he was not convinced. He therefore lived a quiet life, making the best of the present, improving his lands, and doing his best to bring up his sons in such a way as to give them a chance of success when the struggle should come. Orsino was his eldest born, and the results of modern education became apparent in him first, as was inevitable. Orsino was at this time not quite twenty-one years of age, but the important day was not far distant, and in order to leave a lasting memorial of the attaining of his majority, Prince Saracinesca had decreed that Corona should receive a portrait of her eldest son executed by the celebrated Anastase Gouache. To this end the young man spent three mornings in every week in the artist's palatial studio, a place about as different from the latter's first den in the Via San Basilio as the basilica of St. Peter is different from a roadside chapel in the Abruzzi. Those who have seen the successful painter of the nineteenth century in his glory will have less difficulty in imagining the scene of Gouache's labors than the writer would find in describing it. The workroom is a hall; the ceiling is a vault thirty feet high; the pavement is of polished marble; the light enters by north windows which would not look small in a goodsized church; the doors would admit a carriage and pair; the tapestries upon the walls would cover the front of a modern house. Everything is on a grand scale, of the best period, of the most Three or four ori genuine description. ginals of great masters of Titian, of Rubens, of Van Dyck stand on huge easels in the most favorable lights. Some scores of matchless antique fragments, both of bronze and marble, are placed here and there upon superb carved tables and shelves of the sixteenth century. The only reproduction visible in the place is a very perfect cast of the Hermes of Olympia. The carpets are all of Shiraz, Sinna, Gjordez, or old Baku. No common thing of Smyrna, no unclean aniline production of Russo-Asiatic commerce, disturbs the universal harmony. In a full light upon the wall hangs a single silk carpet of wonderful tints, famous in the history of Eastern collections, and upon it is set, at a slanting angle, a single priceless Damascus blade, a sword to possess which an Arab or a Circassian would commit countless crimes. Anastase Gouache is magnificent in all his tastes and in all his ways. His studio and his dwelling are his only estate, his only capital, his only wealth, and he does not take the trouble to conceal the fact. The very idea of a fixed income is as distasteful to him as the possibility of possessing it is distant and visionary. There is always money in abundance: money for Faustina's horses and carriages; money for Gouache's select dinners; money for the expensive fancies of both. The paint-pot is the mine, the brush is the miner's pick, and the vein has never failed nor the hand trembled in working it. A golden youth, a golden river flowing softly to the red gold sunset of the end, that is life as it seems to Anastase and Faustina. On the morning which opens this chronicle Anastase was standing before his canvas, palette and brushes in hand, considering the nature of the human face in general, and of young Orsino's face in particular. "I have known your father and mother for centuries," observed the painter, with a fine disregard of human limitations. "Your father is the brown type of a dark man, and your mother is the olive type of a dark woman. They are no more alike than a red Indian and an Arab, but you are like both. Are you brown or are you olive, my friend? That is the question. I should like to see you angry, or in love, or losing at play. Those things bring out the real complexion." Orsino laughed and showed a remarkably solid set of teeth, but he did not find anything to say. "I should like to know the truth about your complexion," said Anastase meditatively. "I have no particular reason for being angry," answered Orsino, “and I am not in love" — "At your age! Is it possible?" "Quite. But I will play cards with you, if you like," concluded the young man. "No," returned the other. "It would be of no use. You would win, and if you happened to win much I should be in a diabolical scrape. But I wish you would fall in love. You should see how I would handle the green shadows under your eyes." "It is rather short notice." "The shorter the better. I used to think that the only real happiness in life lay in getting into trouble, and the only real interest in getting out." “And have you changed your mind?” "I? No. My mind has changed me. It is astonishing how a man may love his wife under favorable circumstances." Anastase laid down his brushes and lit a cigarette. Rubens would have sipped a few drops of Rhenish from a Venetian glass. Teniers would have lit a clay pipe. Dürer would perhaps have swallowed a pint of Nuremberg beer, and Greuze or Mignard would have resorted to their snuffboxes. We do not know what Michelangelo or Perugino would have done under the circumstances, but it is tolerably evident that the man of the nineteenth century cannot think without talking, and cannot talk without cigarettes. Therefore Anastase began to smoke, and Orsino, being young and imitative, followed his example. "You have been an exceptionally fortunate man," remarked the latter, who was not old enough to be anything but cynical in his views of life. 66 Do you think so? Yes, I have been fortunate. But I do not like to think that my happiness has been so very exceptional. The world is a good place, full of happy people. It must be ; otherwise purgatory and hell would be useless institutions." "You do not suppose all people to be good as well as happy, then?" said Orsino, with a laugh. "Good? What is goodness, my friend? One half of the theologians tell us that we shall be happy if we are good, and the other half assure us that the only way to be good is to abjure earthly happiness. If you will believe me, you will never commit the supreme error of choosing between the two methods. Take the world as it is, and do not ask too many questions of the fates. If you are willing to be happy, happiness will come in its own shape." Orsino's young face expressed rather contemptuous amusement. At twenty, "happiness" is a dull word, and "satisfaction" spells excitement. "That is the way people talk," he said. "You have got everything by fighting for it, and you advise me to sit still till the fruit drops into my mouth." "I was obliged to fight. Everything comes to you naturally, fortune, rank, everything, including marriage. Why should you lift a hand?" "A man cannot possibly be happy who marries before he is thirty years old," answered Orsino, with conviction. "How do you expect me to occupy myself during the next ten years years?" "That is true," Gouache replied. somewhat thoughtfully, as though the bold - imagine that you are already an consideration had not struck him. ancestor contemplating posterity from "If I were an artist, it would be dif- the height of a nobler age ferent." "Oh, very different. I agree with you." Anastase smiled good-humoredly. Because I should have talent, and a talent is an occupation in itself." "I dare say you would have talent," Gouache answered, still smiling. "No, I did not mean it in that way. I mean that when a man has a talent it makes him think of something besides himself." "I fancy there is more truth in that remark than either you or I would at first think," said the painter in a meditative tone. "Of course there is," returned the youthful philosopher, with more enthusiasm than he would have cared to show if he had been talking to a woman. "What is talent but a combination of the desire to do and the power to accomplish? As for genius, it is never selfish when it is at work." "Is that reflection your own?" "I think so," answered Orsino modestly. He was secretly pleased that a man of the artist's experience and reputation should be struck by his remark. "I do not think I agree with you," said Gouache. Orsino's expression changed a little. He was disappointed, but he said nothing. "I think that a great genius is often ruthless. Do you remember how Beethoven congratulated a young composer after the first performance of his opera? I like your opera. I will write music to it.' That was a fine instance of unselfishness, was it not? I can see the young man's face." Anastase smiled. you understand. Try and look as if you were already framed and hanging in the Saracinesca gallery between a Titian. and a Giorgione." Orsino resumed his position, and scowled at Anastase with a good will. "Not quite such a terrible frown, perhaps," suggested the latter. “When you do that, you certainly look like the gentleman who murdered the Colonna in a street brawl-I forget how long ago. You have his portrait. But I fancy the princess would prefer - Yes that is more natural. You have her eyes. How the world raved about her twenty years ago!— and raves still, for that matter." "She is the most beautiful woman in the world," said Orsino. There was something in the boy's unaffected admiration of his mother which contrasted pleasantly with his youthful affectation of cynicism and indifference. His handsome face lighted up a little, and the painter worked rapidly. But the expression was not lasting. Orsino was at the age when most young men take the trouble to cultivate a manner, and the look of somewhat contemptuous gravity which he had lately acquired was already becoming habitual. Since all men in general have adopted the fashion of the mustache, youths who are still waiting for the full crop seem to have difficulty in managing their mouths. Some draw in their lips with that air of unnatural sternness observable in rough weather among passengers on board ship just before they relinquish the struggle and retire from public life. Others contract their mouths to the shape of a heart, while there are yet others who lose control of the pendent lower lip and are content to look like idiots, while expecting the hairy growth which is to make them look like men. Orsino had chosen the least objection able idiosyncrasy and had elected to be of a stern countenance. When he forgot himself he was singularly handsome, and Gouache lay in wait for his moments of forgetfulness. "You are quite right," replied the Frenchman. "From the classic point of view your mother was and is the most beautiful dark woman in the world. For myself — well, in the first place you are her son, and secondly I am an artist, and not a critic. The painter's tongue is his brush and his words are colors." “What were you going to say about my mother?" asked Orsino, with some curiosity. "Oh nothing. Well, if you must hear it, the princess represents my classical ideal, but not my personal ideal. I have admired some one else more." “Donna Faustina?" inquired Orsino. "Ah well, my friend, she is my wife, you see. That always makes a great difference in the degree of admiration." "Generally in the opposite direction," Orsino observed in a tone of elderly unbelief. Gouache had just put his brush into his mouth, and held it between his teeth as a poodle carries a stick, while he used his thumb on the canvas. The modern painter paints with everything, not excepting his fingers. He glanced at his model and then at his work, and got his effect before he answered. "You are very hard upon marriage," he said quietly. "Have you tried it?" "Not yet. I will wait as long as possible before I do. It is not every one who has your luck." "There was something more than luck in my marriage. We loved each. other, it is true, but there were difficulties; you have no idea what difficulties there were. But Faustina was brave, and I caught a little courage from her. Do you know that when the Terristori barracks were blown up she ran out alone to find me merely because she thought I might have been killed? I found her in the ruins, praying for me. It was sublime." "I have heard that. She was very brave." "And I a poor Zouave, and a poorer painter. Are there such women nowadays? Bah! I have not known them. We used to meet at churches and exchange two words while her maid was gone to get her a chair. Oh, the good old time! And then the separations, the taking of Rome, when the old princess carried all the family off to England and stayed there while we were fighting for poor France, and the coming back, and the months of waiting, and the notes dropped from her window at midnight, and the great quarrel with her family when we took advantage of the new law. And then the marriage itself, what a scandal in Rome! But for the princess your mother, I do not know what we should have done. She brought Faustina to the church and drove us to the station in her own carriage, in the face of society. They say that Ascanio Bellegra hung about the door of the church while we were being married, but he had not the courage to come in, for fear of his mother. We went to Naples and lived on salad and love, and we had very little else for a year or two. I was not much known then, except in Rome, and Roman society refused to have its portrait painted by the adventurer who had run away with a daughter of Casa Montevarchi. Perhaps if we had been rich we should have hated each other by this time. But we had to live for each other in those days, for every one was against us. I painted and she kept house, that English blood is always practical in a desert. And it was a desert. The cooking it would have made a billiard ball's hair stand on end with astonishment. She made the salad, and then evolved the roast from the inner consciousness. I painted a chaudfroid on an old plate. It was well done, - - the transparent quality of the jelly and the delicate quails imprisoned within, imploring dissection. Well, must I tell you? We threw it away. It was martyrdom. St. Anthony's position was enviable compared with ours. Beside us that good man would have seemed but a humbug. Yet we lived through it all. I repeat it. We lived, and we were happy. It is amazing how a man may love his wife." Anastase had told his story with many pauses, working hard while he spoke; for though he was quite in earnest in all he said, his chief object was to distract the young man's attention, so as to bring out his natural expression. Having exhausted one of the colors he needed, he drew back and contemplated his work. Orsino seemed lost in thought. You? Who knows? But the times are too old. It is the same thing." "I do not understand." "You are in love with the life, not with the profession. But the life is not the same now, nor the art either. Bah! In a few years I shall be out of fashion. I know it. Then we will go back to first principles. A garret to live in, bread and salad for dinner. Of course, what do you expect? That need not prevent us from living in a palace as long as we can." Thereupon Anastase Gouache hummed a very lively little song as he squeezed a few colors from the tubes. Orsino's face betrayed his discontent. "I was not in earnest," he said; "at least not as to becoming an artist. I only asked the question to be sure that you would answer it just as everybody answers all questions of the kind, discouraging my wish to do anything for myself." by Why should you do anything? You do anything? You are so rich!" "What everybody says ! Do you know what we rich men, or we men who are to be rich, are expected to be? Farmers. It is not gay." "It would be my dream pastoral, you know-Normandy cows, a river with reeds, perpetual Angelus, bread and milk for supper. I adore milk. A nymph here and there; at your age, it is permitted. My dear friend, why not be a farmer?" Orsino laughed a little, in spite of himself. "I suppose that is an artist's idea of farming." "As near the truth as a farmer's idea of art, I dare say," retorted Gouache. "We see you paint, but you never see us at work. That is the difference; but that is not the question. Whatever I propose, I get the same answer. I ima gine you will permit me to dislike farming as a profession." "For the sake of argument, only," said Gouache gravely. . "Good. For the sake of argument. We will suppose that I am myself in all respects what I am, excepting that I am never to have any land, and only enough money to buy cigarettes. I say, Let me take a profession. Let me be a soldier.' Every one rises up and protests against the idea of a Saracinesca serving in the Italian army. Why? Remember that your father was a volunteer officer under Pope Pius IX.' It is comic. He spent an afternoon on the Pincio for his convictions, and then retired into private life. Let me serve in a foreign army, - France, Austria, Russia, I do not care.' They are more horrified than ever. You have not a spark of patriotism! To serve a foreign power! How dreadful! And as for the Russians, they are all heretics.' 'Perhaps they are. I will try diplomacy.' 'What? Sacrifice your convictions? Become the blind instrument of a scheming, dishonest ministry? It is unworthy of a Saracinesca!' 'I will 6 |