The Romance of Giovanni Calvotti | Page 7

like a gentleman. I clapped my hands, and sang, and rattled gay things on the pianoforte. Then I put on my hat--newly recovered from my estimable uncle--and went out to buy canvas and materials for my new picture. I brought these things back in a cab, and carried them upstairs. When I got them there, I found that I had no room for so large a canvas. I had managed to get the small canvases and the little field-easel on which I painted into a good light, but with this it was impossible. I spoke about it to the landlady.
'If you'll excuse me, sir,' she said, 'I think I could propose an arrangement as would suit. The ladies below give warning last week, because the rooms they've got is too expensive.
Now, this little room would do nicely for 'em, with the next, which I shall be glad and thankful for a chance of giving Mr. Jinks his warning,' (Jinks was a drunken tailor, my next-room neighbour.) 'Now, sir, if the rooms below will suit you----'
I told her I was sure they would, and asked her if she would broach the question with the ladies. She went down at once, and came back shortly to ask when it would be convenient for me to remove my things. I said 'at any moment,' There was so little property between us all three, that it was transferred without much trouble in a few minutes. The landlady agreed that Mr. Jinks should have other accommodation secured for him in the house until the end of the next week; and for a single day the ladies were to make themselves at home in this one old room of mine. Miss Grammont came up the stairs with difficulty, and asked--
'When shall you wish to remove your piano, signor?'
Now, I had already proposed to myself a great pleasure.
'Permit me, madame,' I answered, 'to leave it here for a little time, until I can arrange my rooms.'
'Certainly,' the lady answered.
'And if madame or her sister play, it will improve the piano to be played upon, and I shall be vastly gratified.'
Cecilia thanked me with so much energy that I was assured that she was a devotee to music.
'Would she play?' I asked; and she consented.
She was shy before me, but so eager to put her fingers on the keys that she conquered all diffidence and went at once to the piano.
When she had played a Sonata of Haydn's, I turned in my enthusiastic way to her sister and said how I rejoiced to have been able to gratify genius.
'Genius is a very large word,' said Miss Grammont. Cecilia was playing something else, and had not heard me.
'Genius is a large word, madame,' I replied. 'But is not that a large style? Is it not a noble style?'
Cecilia, she allowed, played very finely.
'Finely, madame? 'I respectfully protested--'she should play among the seraphs. You shall allow me, madame. I am no mean musician. As a critic I am exact and exacting. Permit me, madame, that I bring my violin, and play once with Mademoiselle Cecilia.'
She consented. I brought my violin and we played. Cecilia's musical memory is prodigious. Mine is also retentive and precise. But she had too much inventive genius for precision, unless the notes were before her, and sometimes I corrected her. Next, this delicious interlude over, I begged that the ladies would do me the honour to dine with me.
'You must not be extravagant in your good fortune, signor,' Miss Grammont said.
'Trust me, madame,' I answered. 'If the day has dawned, I will hasten no new night and make no artificial curtains.'
Then I went down to paint, and at seven o'clock they joined me at dinner. The meal was sent in from the famous tavern hard by, and I think I may say we all enjoyed it. And then came music, and for an hour we were happy.
CHAPTER III.
--AT POSILIPO.
Ay me, for one hour we were happy, and for many hours thereafter. But when your heart is glad, when you drink the wine of joy, there is Madame Circumstance keeping the score, and she brings in the bill at the end of the banquet, and you pay it in coin of sorrow. She is my old enemy, this Madame Circumstance, as I have told you. It is not always that I can defy her. Who is it that is always brave? Not I. But I shall be brave again in the morning, and the battle will begin again, and I shall win. Pah! I have won already. I have smoked my pipe, and the incense of victory curls about my head just now, at this moment. There is no friend like your pipe. None.
Ten minutes ago I was despondent when; I sat down to write. I broke