Chapter XV: Section VII (1)

The dreary late autumn had arrived, and Theodore was sitting in his room beside the crackling fire, waiting for the worthy Serapion Brethren, who came dropping in, one by one, at the appointed hour.

"What diabolical weather!" cried Cyprian, entering the last. "In spite of my cloak I am nearly wet through, and a gust of wind all but carried away my hat."

"And it won't be better very soon," said Ottmar; "for our meteorologist, who lives in the same street with me, has prognosticated very fine weather at the end of this autumn."

"Right; you are perfectly right, my friend Ottmar," Vincenz said. "Whenever our great prophet consoles his neighbours with the announcement that the winter is not going to be at all severe, but principally of a southerly character, everybody rushes away in alarm, and buys all the wood he can cram into his cellar. The weather-prophet is a wise and highly-gifted man, whom we can thoroughly trust, so long as we expect the exact reverse of what he predicts."

"Those autumnal storms always make me thoroughly wretched," said Sylvester; "I always feel depressed and ill whilst they are going on; and I think you feel the same, Theodore."

"Oh, indeed I do," answered Theodore; "this sort of weather always makes----"

"Splendid!--delightful beginning of a meeting of the Serapion Club!" intercalated Lothair. "We set to work to discuss the weather, like a parcel of old women round the coffee-table."

"I don't see," said Ottmar, "why we should not talk about the weather; the only reason you can object to it is that talking about it seems to be an observance of a kind of rather slovenly old custom, which has resulted from a necessity to say something or other when there happens to be nothing else in people's minds to talk about. What I think is that a few words about the weather and the wind make a very good beginning of a conversation, whatsoever its nature may turn out to be, and that the very universality of the applicability of this as the beginning of a conversation prove how natural it really is."

"As far as I am concerned," said Theodore, "I don't think it matters a farthing how a conversation commences. But there is one thing certain--that, if one wants to make some very striking and clever beginning, that is enough to kill all the freedom and unconstraint which may be termed the very soul of conversation. I know a young man--I think he is known to you all, as well--who is by no means deficient in that mobility of intellect which is absolutely necessary for good conversation; but he is so tormented, particularly when ladies are present, by that kind of eagerness to burst out with something brilliant and striking at the very outset of a talk, that he walks restlessly about the room; makes the most extraordinary faces in the keenness of his inward torment; opens his lips, and--cannot manage to utter a syllable."

"Cease, cease, base wretch!" Cyprian cried, with comic pathos, "do not, with murderous hand, tear open wounds which are barely healed. He is speaking of me," he continued, laughing, "and he doesn't know that, a few weeks ago, when I insisted on restraining that tendency of mine, which I see the absurdity of, and falling into a conversation in the ordinary style of other people, I had to pay for it by complete annihilation. I prefer telling you all about this myself to letting Ottmar do it, and add witty comments of his own. At a tea-party where Ottmar and I were, there was present a certain pretty and clever lady, as to whom you are in the habit of maintaining that she interests me more than is right and proper. I went to talk to her, and I admit that I was a little at a loss how exactly to begin, and she was wicked enough to gaze at me with questioning eyes. I burst out with 'The new moon has brought a nice change of weather.' She answered, very quietly: 'Oh, are you writing the Almanac this season?'"

The friends laughed heartily.

"On the other hand," said Ottmar, "I know another young man--and you all know him--who, particularly with ladies, is never at a loss for the first word of a talk; in fact, my belief is that he has severely thought out, in private, a regular system, of the most comprehensive kind, as to conversation with ladies, which is by no means likely ever to find him left in the lurch. For instance, one of his dodges is to go to the prettiest--one who scarce ventures to dip a sweet biscuit in her tea; who, at the utmost, whispers into the ear of her who is sitting next to her: 'It is very warm, dear;' to which the latter answers with equal softness into her ear: 'Dreadfully, my love;' whose communication goeth not beyond 'Yea, yea,' and 'Nay, nay,'--to go up to such an one, I say, and, in an artful manner, startle her out of her wits, and thereby so utterly revolutionize her very being, in such a sudden manner, that she seems to herself to be no longer the same person: 'Good heavens! how very pale you are looking!' he cried out, recently, to a pretty creature, as silent as a church, just in the act of beginning a stitch of silver thread at a purse which she was working. The young lady let her work fall on her lap in terror, said she was feeling a little feverish that day. Feverish!--my friend was thoroughly at home on that subject; could talk upon it in the most interesting way, like a man who knows his ground; inquired minutely into all the symptoms; gave advice, gave warnings,--and behold! there was a delightful, interesting, confidential conversation spun out in a few minutes."

"I am much obliged to you," said Theodore, "for having so carefully observed that talent of mine, and given it its due meed of approval."

The friends laughed again at this.

"There is no doubt," said Sylvester, "that society talk is, altogether, a rather curious thing. The French say that a certain heaviness in our nature always prevents us from hitting the precise tact and tone necessary for it; and they may be right, to a certain extent, but I must declare that the much-belauded _légèreté_ and lightsomeness of French Society puts me out of temper, and makes me feel stupid and uncomfortable, and that I cannot look upon those _bon mots_ and _calembours_ of theirs, which are continually being fired off in all directions, as coming under the class of that 'Society wit' which gives out constantly fresh sparks of new life of conversation. Moreover, that peculiar style of wit to which the genuine French 'wit' belongs is, to me, in the highest degree disagreeable."

"That opinion," said Cyprian, "comes from the very depths of your quiet, friendly spirit, my dearest Sylvester: but you are forgetting that, besides the (generally utterly empty and insipid) _bon mots_, the 'Society wit' of the French is, in a great degree, founded on a mutual contempt of, and jeering and scoffing at, each other (such as at the present time we call 'chaff,' although it is less good-humoured than that), which soon passes the bounds of what we consider courtesy and consideration, and consequently would speedily deprive our intercourse of all pleasure. Then the French have not the very slightest comprehension of that wit whose basis is real humour, and it is almost incomprehensible how often the point of some not very profound, but superficially funny, little story escapes them."

"Don't forget," said Ottmar, "that the point of a story is very often completely untranslatable."

"Or is badly translated," said Vincenz. "It so happens that I just think of a very amusing thing which happened quite recently, and which I will tell you, if you care to hear it."

"Tell us, tell us! delightful fabulist! valued anecdotist!" cried the friends.

"A young man," related Vincenz, "whom nature had endowed with a splendid bass voice, and who had gone upon the operatic stage, was making his first appearance as Sarastro, in the 'Magic Flute.' As he was mounting the car, in which he first comes on, he was seized with such a terrible attack of stage-fright that he trembled and shook--nay, when the car got into motion to come forward, he shrunk into himself, and all the manager's efforts to induce him to reassure himself, and, at all events, stand upright, were useless. Just then it happened that one of the wheels got entangled in the long mantle which Sarastro wears, so that the further he got on to the stage, the more this mantle dragged him backwards; whilst he, struggling against this, and keeping his feet firm, appeared in the centre of the stage with the nether portion of his body projecting forwards, and his head and shoulders held tremendously far back. The audience were immensely pleased at this most regal attitude and appearance of the inexperienced neophyte, and the manager offered him, and concluded with him, an engagement on very liberal terms. Now, this simple little story was being told, lately, in a company where there was a French lady who did not understand a word of German. When everybody laughed, at the end of the story, she wanted to know what the laughter was about, and our worthy D. (who, when he speaks French, gives a most admirable, and very close, imitation of the tones and actions of French people, but is continually at a loss for the words) undertook to translate the story to her. When he came to the wheel which had got entangled with Sarastro's cloak, constraining him to his regal attitude, he called it 'Le rat,' instead of 'La roue.' The French lady's brow clouded, her eyebrows drew together, and in her face was plainly to be read the terror which the story had produced in her, whereto conduced the circumstance that D. had 'let on' upon his face the full power of tragi-comic muscular play which it was capable of. When, at the end, we all laughed more than before at this amusing misunderstanding (which we all took good care not to explain), she murmured to herself, 'Ah! les barbares!' The good lady not unnaturally looked upon us as barbarians for thinking it so amusing that an abominable rat should have frightened the poor young man almost to death, at the very commencement of his stage-career, by holding on to his cloak."

When the friends had done laughing, Vincenz said: "Suppose we now bid adieu to the subject of French conversation, with all its _bon mots_, _calembours_, and other ingredients, and come to the conclusion that it really is an immense pleasure when, amongst intellectual Germans, a conversation, inspired by their humour, rushes up skyward like a coruscating firework, in a thousand hissing light-balls, crackling serpents, and lightning-like rockets."

"But it must be remembered," said Theodore, "that this pleasure is possible only when the friends in question, besides being intellectual and endowed with humour, possess the talent not only of talking, but of listening, the principal ingredient of real conversation."

"Of course," said Lothair; "those people who constitute themselves 'spokesmen' destroy all conversation--and so, in a lesser degree, do the 'witty' folk, who go from one company to another with anecdotes, crammed full of all sorts of shallow sayings; a kind of self-constituted 'Society clowns.' I knew a man who, being clever and witty, and at the same time a terribly talkative fellow, was invited everywhere to amuse the company; so that, the moment he came into a room, everybody looked in his face, waiting till he came out with something witty. The wretch was compelled to put himself to the torture, in order to fulfil the expectations entertained of him as well as he could, so that he could not avoid soon becoming flat and commonplace; and then he was thrown aside by every one, like a used-up utensil. He now creeps about, spiritless and sad, and seems to be like that dandy in Abener's 'Dream of Departed Souls,' who, brilliant as he was in this life, is sorrowful and valueless in the other, because, on his sudden and unexpected departure, he left behind him his snuff-box of Spanish snuff, which was an integral part of him."

"Then, too," said Ottmar, "there are certain extraordinary people who, when entertaining company, keep up an unceasing stream of talk; not from conceit in themselves, but from a strange, mistaken well-meaningness, for fear that people shouldn't be enjoying themselves; and keep asking if people are not 'finding it dull,' and so forth, thereby nipping every description of enjoyment in the bud in a moment."'

"That is the very surest way to weary people," said Theodore, "and I once saw it employed with the most brilliant success by my old humourist of an uncle, who, I think, from what I have told you of him, you know pretty intimately by this time. An old schoolfellow of his had turned up--a man who was utterly tedious and unendurably wearisome in all his works and ways--and he came to my uncle's house every forenoon, disturbed him at his work, worried him to death, and then sat down to dinner without being invited. My uncle was grumpy, snappish, silent, giving his visitor most unmistakably to understand that his calls were anything but a pleasure to him; but it was all of no use. Once, when the old gentleman was complaining to me (in strong enough language, as his manner was) on the subject of this schoolfellow, I said I thought he should simply show him the door and have done with it. 'That wouldn't do, boy,' said my uncle, puckering his face into a rather pleased smile. 'You see, he is an old schoolfellow of mine, after all; but there is another way of getting rid of him which I shall try; and that will do it.' I was not a little surprised when, the next morning, my uncle received the schoolfellow with open arms and talked to him unceasingly, saying how delighted he was to see him, and go back over the old days with him. All the old school-day stories which the schoolfellow was incessantly in the habit of repeating, and re-repeating, till they became intolerable to listen to, now poured from my uncle's lips in a resistless cataract, no that the visitor could not escape them. And all the while my uncle kept asking him, 'What is the matter with you to-day? You don't seem happy. You are so monosyllabic. Do be jolly! Let us have a regular feast of old stories to-day.' But the moment the schoolfellow opened his lips to speak my uncle would cut him short with some interminable tale. At last the affair became so unendurable to him that he wanted to cut and run. But my uncle so pressed him to stay to lunch and dinner, that, unable to resist the temptation of the good dishes, and better wine, he did stay. But scarce had he swallowed a mouthful of soup when my uncle, in extreme indignation, cried, 'What in the devil's name is this infernal mess? Don't touch any more of it, brother, I beg you; there's something better to come. Take those plates away, John!' Like a flash of lightning the plate was swept away from under the school-friend's nose. It was the same thing with all the dishes and courses, though they were of a nature sufficiently to excite the appetite, till the 'something better to come' resolved itself into Cheshire cheese, which of all cheeses the school-friend hated the most, although he disliked all cheese. From an apparently ardent endeavour to set before him an unusually good dinner he had not been suffered to swallow two mouthfuls; and it was much the same with the wine. Scarce had he put a glass to his lips when my uncle cried, 'Old fellow, you're making a wry face. Quite right, that isn't wine, it's vinegar. John, a better tap!' And one kind after another came, French wines, Rhine wines, and still the cry was, 'You don't care about that wine,' &c., till, when the Cheshire cheese put the finishing stroke on things, the school-friend jumped up from his chair in a fury. 'Dear old friend!' said my uncle in the kindliest of tones, 'you are not at all like your usual self. Come, as we are together here, let us crack a bottle of the real old "care-killer."' The school-friend plumped into his chair again. The hundred years' old Rhine wine pearled glorious and clear in the two glasses which my uncle filled to the brim. 'The devil,' he cried, holding his glass to the light, 'this wine has got muddy, on my hands. Don't you see? No, no; I can't set that before anybody,' and he swallowed the contents of both glasses himself, with evident delight. The school-friend popped up again, and plumped into his chair once more on my uncle's crying, 'John, Tokay!' The Tokay was brought, my uncle poured it out, and handed the schoolfellow a glass, saying, 'There, my boy, you shall be satisfied at last, in good earnest. That is nectar!' But scarce had the school-friend set the glass to his lips when my uncle cried, 'Thunder! there's been a cockroach at this bottle.' At this the school-friend, in utter fury, dashed the glass into a thousand pieces against the wall, ran out of the house like one possessed, and never showed his face across the threshold again."

"With all respect for your uncle's grim humour," said Sylvester, "I think there was rather a systematic perseverance in the course of mystification involved in such a process of getting rid of a troublesome person. I should have much preferred to show him the door and have done with it; though I admit that it was quite according to your uncle's peculiar vein of humour to prearrange a theatrical scene of this sort in place of the perhaps troublesome and unpleasant consequences which might have arisen if he had kicked him out. I can vividly picture to myself the old parasite as he suffered the torments of Tantalus, as your uncle kept continually awakening fresh hopes in his mind and instantly dashing them to the ground; and how, at last, utter desperation took possession of him."

"You can introduce the scene into your next comedy," said Theodore.

"It reminds me," said Vincenz, "of that delightful meal in Katzenberger's _Badereise_, and of the poor exciseman who has almost to choke himself with the bites of food which are slid to him over the 'Trumpeter's muscle,' the Buccinator, although that scene would not be of much service to Sylvester for a new piece."

"The great Kazenberger," said Theodore, "whom women do not like on account of the robustness of his cynicism, I formerly knew very well. He was intimate with my uncle, and I could, at some future time, tell you many delightful things concerning him."

Cyprian had been sitting in profound thought, and seemed to have been scarcely attending to what the others had been saying. Theodore tried to arouse his attention and direct it to the hot punch which he had brewed as the best corrective of the evil influence of the weather.

"Beyond a doubt," said Cyprian, "this is the germ of insanity, if it is not actually insanity itself."

The friends looked questionably at each other.

"Ha!" cried Cyprian, getting up from his chair and looking round him with a smile, "I find I have spoken out, aloud, the conclusion of the mental process which has been going on within me in silence. After I have emptied this glass of punch and duly lauded Theodore's art of preparing that liquid after its mystic proportions, and due relations of the hot, strong and sweet, I will simply point out that there is a certain amount of insanity, a certain dose of crackiness, so deeply rooted in human nature, that there is no better mode of getting at the knowledge of it than by carefully studying it in those madmen and eccentrics whom we by no means have to go to madhouses to come across, but whom we may meet with every hour of the day in our daily course; and, in fact, best of all in the study of our own selves, in each of whom these is present a sufficient quantum of that 'precipitate resulting from the chemical process of life.'"

"What has brought you back to the subject of insanity and the insane?" asked Lothair, in a tone of vexation.

"Do not lose your temper, dear Lothair," said Cyprian, "we were talking on the subject of society conversation; and then I thought of two mutually antagonistic classes of characters which are often fatal to social talking. There are people who find it impossible to get away from ideas which have come to occupy their minds; who go on repeating the same things over and over again, for hours, no matter what turn the conversation may have taken. All efforts to carry them along with the stream of the conversation are vain; when one at last flatters oneself that one has got them into the current of the talk, lo and behold, they return _à leurs moutons_ again, just as before, and consequently dam up the beautiful, rushing stream of conversation. In contradistinction to them are those who forget one second what they said in the immediately preceding one; who ask a question, and, without waiting for an answer, introduce something completely irrelevant and heterogeneous; to whom everything suggests everything else, and consequently nothing which has any connection with the subject of the talk--who, in a few words, throw together a many-tinted lumber of ideas in which nothing that can be called distinct is discoverable. Those latter destroy everything like agreeable conversation and drive us to a state of despair, and the former produce intolerable tedium and annoyance. But, don't you think there lies in those people the germ of real insanity in the one case, and in the other of _folie_, whose character is very much, if not exactly, what the psychological doctors term 'looseness' or 'incoherence' of ideas?"

"There is no doubt," said Theodore, "that I should like to say a great deal concerning the art of _relating_ in society, for there is much which is mysterious about it, depending, as it does, on place, time, and individual relationships, and difficult to be ranged under special heads. But it seems to me that this matter might carry us too far, and be opposed to the real tendency of the Serapion Club."

"Most certainly," said Lothair. "We want to tranquillise ourselves with the thought that we--neither madmen nor fools--are, on the contrary, the most delightful companions to each other; who not only can talk, but can listen; more than that, each of us can listen quite patiently when another reads aloud, and that is saying a good deal. Friend Ottmar told me a day or two ago that he had written a story in which the celebrated poet-painter Salvator Rosa played a leading part. I hope he will read it to us now."

"I am a little afraid," said Ottmar, as he took the manuscript from his pocket, "that you won't think my story Serapiontic. I had it in mind to imitate that ease and genial liberty of breadth which predominates in the 'Novelli' of the old Italians, particularly of Boccaccio; and over this endeavour I acknowledge that I have grown prolix. Also you will say, with justice, that it is only here and there that I have hit upon the true 'Novella' tone--perhaps only in the headings of the chapters. After this noble and candid confession I am sure you will not deal too hardly with me, but think chiefly of anything which you may find entertaining and lively."

"What prefaces!" cried Lothair. "An unnecessary _Capitatio Benevolentiae_; read us your Novella, my good friend Ottmar, and if you succeed in vividly portraying to us your Salvator Rosa in verisimilitude before our eyes, we will recognise you as a true Serapion brother, and leave everything else to the grumbling, fault-finding critics. Shall it not be so, my eminent Serapion Brethren?"

The friends acquiesced, and Ottmar began.

SIGNOR FORMICA.
_A NOVELLA._

The renowned painter, Salvator Rosa, comes to Rome, and is attacked by
a dangerous malady.--What happened to him during this malady.

People of renown generally have much evil spoken of them, whether truthfully or otherwise, and this was the case with the doughty painter Salvator Rosa, whose vivid, living pictures you, dear reader, have certainly never looked upon without a most special and heartfelt enjoyment.

When his fame had pervaded and resounded through Rome, Naples, Tuscany, nay, all Italy; when other painters, if they would please, were obliged to imitate his peculiar style--just then, malignant men, envious of him, invented all sorts of wicked reports concerning him, with the view of casting foul spots of shadow upon the shining auriole of his artistic fame. Salvator, they said, had, at an earlier time of his life, belonged to a band of robbers, and it was to his experiences at that time that he was indebted for all the wild, gloomy, strangely-attired figures which he introduced into his pictures, just as he copied into his landscape those darksome deserts, compounded of lonesomeness, mystery, and terror--the _Selve Selvagge_ of Dante--where he had been driven to lurk. The worst accusation brought against him was that he had been involved in that terrible, bloody conspiracy which "Mas' Aniello" of evil fame had set afoot in Naples. People told all about that, with the minutest details.

Aniello Falcone, the battle-painter (as he was called), blazed up in fury and bloodthirsty revenge when the Spanish soldiers killed one of his relations in a skirmish. On the spot he collected together a crowd of desperate and foolhardy young men, principally painters, provided them with arms, and styled them "the death-company"; and, in verity, this band spread abroad a full measure of the terror and alarm which its name indicated. Those young men pervaded Naples, in troop form, all day long, killing every Spaniard they came across. More than this, they stormed their way into all the sacred places of sanctuary, and there, without compunction, murdered their wretched enemies who had taken refuge there, driven by fear of death. At night they betook themselves to their chief, the mad, bloodthirsty Mas' Aniello, and they painted pictures of him by torchlight, so that in a short time hundreds of those pictures of him were spread about Naples and the surrounding neighbourhood.

Now it was said that Salvator Rosa had been a member of this band, robbing and murdering all day, but painting with equal assiduity all night. What a celebrated art-critic--Taillasson, I think--said of our master is true: "His works bear the impress of a wild haughtiness and arrogance, of a bizarre energy, of the ideas and of their execution. Nature displays herself to him not in the lovely peacefulness of green meadows, flowery fields, perfumed groves, murmuring streams, but in the awfulness of mighty up-towering cliffs, or sea-coasts, and wild, inhospitable forests; the voice to which he listens is not the whispering of the evening breeze, or the rustling of the leaves, but the roar of the hurricane, the thunder of the cataract. When we look at his deserts and the people of strange, wild appearance, who, sometimes singly, sometimes in troops, prowl about them, the weirdest fancies come to us of their own accord. Here there happened a terrible murder, there the bleeding corpse was thrown hurriedly over the cliff, &c., &c."

Now this may all be the case, and although Taillasson may not be far wrong when he says that Salvator's "Plato," and even his "St. John in the Wilderness announcing the Birth of the Saviour," look just the least little bit like brigands, still it is unfair to base any conclusions drawn from the works upon the painter himself, and to suppose that, though he represents the wild and the terrible in such perfection, he must have been a wild and terrible person himself. He who talks most of the sword often wields it the worst; he who so feels in his heart the terror of bloody deeds that he is able to call them into existence with palette, pencil or pen, may be the least capable of practising them. Enough! of all the wicked calumnies which would represent the doughty Salvator to have been a remorseless robber and murderer, I do not believe a single word, and I hope you, dear reader, maybe of the same opinion, or I should have to cherish a certain amount of doubt whether you would quite believe what I am going to tell you about him.

For--as I hope--my Salvator will appear to you as a man burning and coruscating with life and fire, but also endowed with the most charming and delightful nature, and often capable of controlling that bitter irony which--in him, as in all men of depth of character--takes form of itself from observation of life. Moreover, it is known that Salvator was as good a poet and musician as a painter, his inward genius displaying itself in rays thrown in various directions. I repeat that I have no belief in his having had anything to do with the crimes of Mas' Aniello; I rather hold to the opinion that he was driven from Naples to Rome by the terror of the time, and arrived there as a fugitive at the very time of Mas' Aniello's fall.

There was nothing very remarkable about his dress, and, with a little purse containing a few zecchini in his pocket, he slipped in at the gate just as night was falling. Without exactly knowing how, he came to the Piazza Navoni, where, in happier days, he had formerly lived in a fine house close to the Palazzo Pamphili. Looking up at the great shining windows, glittering and sparkling in the moonbeams, he cried, with some humour, "Ha! it will cost many a canvass ere I can establish my studio there again." Just as he said so he suddenly felt as if paralysed in all his limbs, and, at the same time, feeble and powerless in a manner which he had never before experienced in all his life. As he sank down on the stone steps of the portico of the house he murmured between his teeth, "Shall I ever want canvasses? It seems to me that _I_ have done with them."

A cold, cutting night-wind was blowing through the streets; Salvator felt he must try and get a shelter. He rose with difficulty, tottered painfully forward, reached the Corso, and turned into Strada Vergognona. There he stopped before a small house, only two windows wide, where lived a widow with two daughters. They had taken him as a lodger for a small sum when first he came to Rome, known and cared for by nobody, and he hoped he would find a lodging with them now suited to his reduced circumstances.

He knocked familiarly at the door, and called his name in at it time after time. At last he heard the old woman rousing herself with difficulty from sleep. She came, dragging along her slippers, to the window, scolding violently at the scoundrel who was disturbing her in the middle of the night--her house not being an inn, &c. Then it took a deal of up and down talking ere she recognised her former lodger by his voice; and on Salvator's complaining that he had been obliged to flee from Naples and could find no roof to cover him in Rome, she cried out, "Ah! Christ and all the saints! Is it you, Signor Salvator? Your room upstairs, looking upon the courtyard, is empty still, and the old fig-tree has stretched its leaves and branches right into the window, so that you can sit and work as if you were in a beautiful cool arbour. Ah! how delighted my girls will be that you are here again, Signor Salvator. But I must tell you Margerita has grown a big girl, and a very _pretty_ girl--it won't do to take her on your knee now! Your cat, only fancy, died three months ago--a fish bone stuck in its throat. Aye, aye, poor thing! the grave is the common lot. And what do you think? Our fat neighbour woman--she whom you so often laughed at and drew the funny caricatures of--she has gone and got married to that young lad, Signor Luigi. Well, well! _Nozze e magistrati sono da dio destinati!_ Marriages are made in heaven, they say."

"But, Signora Caterina," interrupted Salvator, "I implore you by all the saints let me in to begin with, and then tell all about your fig-tree, your daughters, the kitten, and the fat woman. I am dying of cold and weariness."

"Now, just see how impatient he is!" cried the old woman. "_Chi va piano va sano; chi va presto muore lesto._ The more haste the less speed, is what I always say. But you're tired, you're shivering; so quick with the key, quick with the key."

Before getting hold of the key, however, she had to awaken her daughters, and then slowly, slowly strike a light. Ultimately she opened the door to the exhausted Salvator; but as soon as he crossed the threshold he fell down like a dead man, overcome by exhaustion and illness. Fortunately the widow's son, who lived at Tivoli, happened to have just come home, and he was at once turned out of his bed, which he willingly gave up to this sick family friend.

The old lady had a great fondness for Salvator, rated him, as regarded his art, above all the painters in the world, and had the utmost delight in everything he did. Therefore she was much distressed at his deplorable condition, and wanted to run off at once to the neighbouring monastery and bring her own Father Confessor, that he might do battle with the powers of evil at once, with consecrated tapers, or some powerful amulet or other. But the son thought it would be better almost to send for a good doctor, and he set off on the instant to the Piazza di Spagna, where he knew the celebrated doctor, Splendiano Accoramboni, lived. As soon as he heard that the great painter Salvator Rosa was lying sick in Strada Vergognona, he prepared to pay him a professional visit. Salvator was lying unconscious in the most violent fever. The old woman had hung up one or two images of saints over his bed, and was praying fervently. The daughters, bathed in tears, were trying to get him now and then to swallow a few drops of the cooling lemonade which they had made, whilst the son, who had taken his station at the bed-head, wiped the cold perspiration from his brow. In these circumstances the morning had come, when the door opened with much noise, and the celebrated doctor, Signor Splendiano Accoramboni, entered.

If it had not been for the great heart-sorrow over Salvator's mortal sickness, the two girls, petulant and merry as they were, would have laughed loud and long at the doctor's marvellous appearance. As it was, they drew away into corners, frightened and shy. It is worth while to describe the aspect of this extraordinary little fellow as he came into Dame Caterina's in the grey of the morning. Although he had, apparently, given early promise of reaching a most distinguished stature, Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni had not managed to get beyond the altitude of four feet. At the same time he had, in his early years, been of most delicate formation as regarded his members--and, before the head (which had always been somewhat shapeless) had acquired too much increment of matter in the shape of his fat cheeks and his stately double chin--ere the nose had assumed too much of a lateral development, in consequence of being stuffed with Spanish snuff--ere the stomach had assumed too great a rotundity by dint of maccaroni fodder--the dress of an Abbate, which he had worn in those early days, became him very well. He had a right to be styled a nice little fellow, and the Roman ladies accordingly did speak of him as their _caro puppazetto_.

But now those days were over, and a German painter, who saw him crossing the Piazza di Spagna, said of him, not without reason, that he looked as if some stalwart fellow of six feet high had run away from his own head and it had fallen on to the shoulders of a little marionette Pulcinello, who had now to go about with it as his own. This strange little figure had thrust itself into a great mass of Venetian damask, all over great flowers, made into a dressing-gown, and girt itself about, right under the breast, with a broad leather girdle, in which was stuck a rapier three ells long; and above his snow-white periwig there clung a high-peaked head-dress, not much unlike the obelisk in the Piazza San Pietro. As the periwig went meandering like a tangled web, thick and broad, over his back and shoulders, it might well have been taken for the cocoon out of which the beautiful insect had issued.

The worthy Splendiano Accoramboni glared through his spectacles, first at the sick Salvator, and then on Dame Caterina, whom he drew to one side. "There," he said, in a scarce audible whisper, "lies the great painter Salvator Rosa sick unto death in your house, Dame Caterina, and nothing but my skill can save him! Tell me, though, how long it is since he came to you? Has he plenty of grand, beautiful pictures with him?"

"Ah! dear Signor Dottore," answered the old woman, "this dear boy of mine only came to-night, and, as concerns the pictures, I know nothing about them as yet. But there's a large box downstairs, which he told me, before he got to be unconscious as he is now, to take the greatest care of. I should suppose there is a grand picture in it which he has painted in Naples."

Now this was a fib which Dame Caterina told; but we shall soon see what good reason she had for telling it to the doctor.

"Ah, ah! Yes, yes!" said the doctor, stroking his beard. Then he solemnly strode up as close to the patient as his long rapier, which banged against and entangled itself with the chairs and tables, admitted of his doing, took his hand and felt his pulse, sighing and groaning as he did so in a manner which sounded wonderful enough in the deep silence of reverential awe which prevailed. He then named a hundred and twenty diseases, in Latin and Greek, which Salvator had not, then about the same number which he might possibly have contracted, and ended by saying that although he could not just at that moment exactly name the malady which Salvator was suffering from, he would hit upon a name for it in a short time, and also the proper remedies and treatment for its cure. He then took his departure with the same amount of solemnity with which he had entered, leaving all hands in the due condition of anxiety and alarm. He asked to see Salvator's box downstairs, and Dame Caterina showed him a box, in which were some old clothes of her deceased husband's, and some old boots and shoes. He tapped the box with his hand here and there, saying, with a smile, "We shall see! We shall see!" In an hour or two he came back with a very grand name for what was the matter with Salvator, and several large bottles of a potion with an evil smell, which he directed that the patient should keep on swallowing. That was not such an easy matter, for the patient resisted with might and main, and expressed, as well as he could, his utter abhorrence of this stuff, which seemed to be a brew from the very pit of Acheron. But whether it was that the malady, now that it had got a name, exerted itself more powerfully, or that Splendiano and medicine were working too energetically--enough, with every day and nearly every hour, one might say, Salvator grew weaker and weaker, so that, although Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni asseverated that, the processes of life having come to a complete standstill, he had given the machine an impetus towards renewed activity (as if it had been the pendulum of a clock), all the by-standers doubted of Salvator's recovery, and were disposed to think that the Signor Dottore might, perhaps, have given the pendulum such a rough impulse that it was put out of gear.

But one day it happened that Salvator, who seemed scarcely able to move a muscle, suddenly got into a paroxysm of tremendous fever, and, regaining strength in an instant, jumped out of bed, seized all the bottles of medicine, and in a fury sent the whole collection flying out of the window. Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni was just in the act to come into the house to pay a visit, and, as Fate would have it, two or three of the phials hit him on the head, and breaking, sent the brown liquid within them flowing in dark streams over his face, his periwig, and his neckerchief. The doctor sprang nimbly into the house, and cried, like a man possessed, "Signor Salvator is off his head! Delirium has evidently set in--nothing can save him. He'll be a dead man in ten minutes. Here with the picture, Dame Caterina; it belongs to me--all I shall get for my services! Here with the picture, I tell you."

But when Dame Caterina opened the box, and Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni saw the old cloaks and the burst and tattered boots and shoes which it contained, his eyes rolled in his head like fire wheels, he gnashed his teeth, stamped with his feet, devoted Salvator, the widow, and all the inmates of the house, to the demons of hell, and bolted out of the door as if discharged from a cannon.

When the paroxysm of excitement was over, Salvator again fell into a deathlike condition, and Dame Caterina thought his last hour was certainly come. So she ran as quickly as she could to the convent, and brought Father Bonifazio to administer the sacraments to the dying man. When Father Bonifazio came, he looked at the patient, said he very well knew the peculiar signs which death imprints upon the face of one whom he is going to carry off; but there was nothing of the sort to be seen on the face of the unconscious Salvator in his faint, and that help was still possible, and he himself would procure or bestow; only Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni, with his Greek names and diabolical phials, must never cross the doorstep again. The good father set to work, and we shall find that he kept his word.

Salvator came to his senses, and it seemed to him that he was lying in a delightful, sweet-smelling arbour, for green branches and leaves were stretching over him. He felt a delightful salutary warmth of life permeating him, only, apparently, his left arm was fettered.

"Where am I?" he cried, in a faint voice. Then a young man of handsome appearance, whom he had not observed before, though he was standing by his bed, fell down on his knees, seized Salvator's right hand, bathing it in tears, and cried over and over again, "Oh, my beloved Signor, my grand master! all is well now! You are saved; you will recover!"

"Well," began Salvator, "but tell me----"

The young man interrupted him, begging him not to talk in his weak condition, and promising to tell him all that had been happening. "You must know, my dear and great master, that you must have been exceedingly ill when you arrived in Naples here; but your condition was not probably very dangerous, and moderate measures, considering the strength of your constitution, would doubtless have set you on your legs again in a short time, if it had not happened, through Carlo's well-meant mischance--as he ran for the nearest doctor at once--that you fell into the clutches of the abominable Pyramid Doctor, who did his very best to put you under the sod."

"The Pyramid Doctor?" said Salvator, laughing most heartily, weak as he was. "Yes, yes; ill as I was, I saw him well enough, the little damasky creature, who condemned me to swallow all that diabolical stuff--hell broth as it was--and had the obelisk of the Piazza San Pietro on the top of his head, which is the reason you call him the Pyramid Doctor."

"Oh, heavens!" cried the young man, laughing loudly too. "Yes, it was Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni who appeared to you in that mysterious high-pointed nightcap of his, in which he gleams out of his window in the Piazza di Spagna every morning like some meteor of evil omen. But it is not on account of the cap that he is called the Pyramid Doctor; there is a very different reason for that. Doctor Splendiano is very fond of pictures, and has a very fine collection, which he has got together through a peculiar piece of technical practice. He keeps a close and watchful eye upon painters and their illnesses, and particularly he manages to throw his nets over stranger masters. Suppose they have swallowed a little too much macaroni, or taken a cup or two more syracuse than is good for them, he succeeds in throwing his noose over them, and labels them with this or that disease, which he christens by some monstrous name, and then sets to work to cure. As fee he makes them promise him a picture, which, as it is only the strongest constitutions which can resist the powerful drugs he administers, he generally selects from the effects of the deceased, deposited at the Pyramid of Cestius. He takes the best of them, and others into the bargain. The refuse heap at the Pyramid of Cestius is the seedfield of Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni, and he cultivates, dresses, and manures it most assiduously. And that is why he is called the Pyramid Doctor. Now Dame Caterina, with the best intentions, had given the doctor to understand that you had brought a fine picture with you, and you can imagine the ardour with which he set to work to brew potions for you. It was lucky for you that in your paroxysm of fever you threw the stuff at his head, that he left you in a fury, that Dame Caterina sent for Father Bonifazio to administer the sacraments, believing you at death's door. Father Bonifazio knows a great deal about doctoring; he formed a correct opinion as to your condition, sent for me, and----"

"Then you are a doctor too," said Salvator, in a faint, melancholy tone.

"No," answered the young gentleman, while a bright colour came to his cheek, "my dear, renowned master, I am not a doctor like Signor Splendiano Accoramboni; I am a surgeon. I thought I should have sunk into the ground with terror--with joy--when Father Bonifazio told me Salvator Rosa was lying sick to death in Strada Vergognona and requiring my assistance. I hastened here, opened a vein in your left arm, and you were saved. We brought you here to this cool, airy room, where you used to live before. Look around you; there is the easel which you left behind you; there are one or two sketches still, preserved, like holy relics, by Dame Caterina. Your illness has had its back broken. Simple remedies, which Father Bonifazio will give you, and careful nursing will set you on your legs again. And now, permit me once more to kiss this creative hand, which calls forth, as by magic, the most hidden secrets of nature. Permit the poor Antonio Scacciati to allow all his heart to stream forth in delight and fervent gratitude that heaven vouchsafed to him the good fortune to save the life of the glorious and renowned master, Salvator Rosa."

He again knelt, seized Salvator's hand, kissed it, and bedewed it with hot tears as before.

"I cannot tell, dear Antonio," said Salvator, raising himself up a little, "what strange spirit inspires you to exhibit such a profound veneration for me. You say you are a surgeon, and that is a calling which does not usually pair itself readily with art."

"When you have got some strength back, dear master," answered Antonio, "there are many matters lying heavy at my heart which I will tell you of."

"Do so," said Salvator; "place full confidence in me--you may, for I do not know when a man's face went more truly to my very heart than does yours. The more I look at you the more clear it becomes to me that there is a great likeness in your face to that of the heavenly, godlike lad--I mean the Sanzio." Antonio's eyes glowed with flashing fire; he seemed to strive in vain to find words.

Just then Dame Caterina came in with Father Bonifazio, bringing a draught which he had skilfully compounded, and which the sick man took, and relished better than the Acherontic liquids of the Pyramid Doctor, Splendiano Accoramboni.

* * * * * *

Antonio Scacciati comes to high honour through the intervention of
Salvator Rosa.--He confides to Salvator the causes of his
continual sorrowfulness, and Salvator comforts him, and promises
him help.

What Antonio promised came to pass. The simple, healing medicines of Father Bonifazio, the careful nursing of Dame Caterina and her daughters, the mild season of the year which just then came on, had such a speedy effect on Salvator's strong constitution, that he soon felt well enough to begin thinking of his art, and, as a beginning, made some magnificent sketches for pictures which he intended to paint at a future time.

Antonio scarcely left Salvator's room. He was all eye when the master was sketching, and his opinions on many matters showed him to be initiated in the mysteries of art himself.

"Antonio," said Salvator, one day, "you know so much about art that I believe you have not only looked on at a great deal with correct understanding, but have even wielded the pencil yourself!"

"Remember, dear master," answered Antonio, "that when you were recovering from unconsciousness, I told you there were many things lying heavy on my heart. Perhaps it is time, now, for me to divulge my secrets to you fully. Although I am the surgeon who opened a vein for you, I belong to Art with all my heart and soul. I intend now to devote myself to it altogether, and throw the hateful handicraft entirely to the winds."

"Ho, ho, Antonio!" said Salvator, "bethink you what you are going to do. You are a clever surgeon, and perhaps will never be more than a bungler at painting. Young as you are in years, you are too old to begin with the crayon. A man's whole life is scarcely enough in which to attain to one single perception of the True, still less to the power of representing it poetically."

"Ah, my dear master," said Antonio, smiling gently, "how should I entertain the mad idea of beginning now to turn myself to the difficult art of painting, had I not worked at it as hard as I could ever since I was a child, had not heaven so willed it that, though I was kept away from art, and everything in the shape of it, by my father's obstinacy and folly, I made the acquaintance, and enjoyed the society, of masters of renown. Even the great Annibale interested himself in the neglected boy, and I have the happiness to be able to say I am a pupil of Guido Reni."

"Well, good Antonio," said Salvator, a little sharply, as his manner sometimes was. "If that is so, you have had great teachers; so, no doubt, in spite of your surgical skill, you may be a great pupil of theirs too. Only what I do not understand is, how you, as a pupil of the gentle and tender Guido (whom, perhaps, as pupils in their enthusiasm sometimes do--you even outdo in tenderness, in your work), how you can hold me to be a master in my art at all."

Antonio coloured at those words of Salvator's; in fact, they had about them a ring of jeering irony.