Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 050.djvu/348

314 I know it well—see that you fetch the money.

One question further—the five hundred crowns,

To be awarded as the picture's prize, They should belong to—

. You—that is but fair.

(Sighing.) Which still leaves more than nineteen thousand crowns.

(Exit, bowing courteously to Salvator, who accompanies him to the door.)

. I did not think he would have closed with me.

Bring but the gold, and thou shalt be exposed

Till Florence wide shall ring with thy disgrace.

Thou thoughtest, didst thou, I would sell my birthright,

And tear for gold the laurel from my brow?

Old dotard! dealings such as thine would rob

The light of splendour, and the flower of bloom.

Think'st thou I came to Florence as a huckster—

Not as a painter lit by light from heaven?

I'll teach thee what it is to lay a hand,

Audacious and impure unholy things.

Love thou would'st purchase—thou would'st purchase fame,

And painting's pleasures, shunning all its pains.

The rose thou wishest I thou shalt feel the thorn—

This is a bargain thou shalt long remember.

I've brought my picture.

. Prithee set it down—

In a few moments I'll attend to it.

Here, on the easel?

Set it where you please—

And now, Bernardo, tell me what you know

Of this old fool Calmari.

. Ah! he is

A dragon watching an enchanted garden—

Laura his ward's the fairest thing that lives.

. You know the maiden?

. For these six months past

We have met daily.

. How so? why, he told me

That not an eye but his had ever seen her.

And yet the two eyes of your friend Bernardo

Behold her daily.

. How do you contrive

To hoodwink Cerberus?

Ten months ago,

This old Calmari sent for me to bleed him.

Then for the first time I beheld his ward:

She came into the chamber where we sat,

But scarcely had she enter'd it when he

Up starting fierce, despite his bleeding arm,

Thrust her out rudely, and slamm'd to the door.

Struck by the vision, I stood motionless,

While the old man—his keen eye scanning me,

His lower lip convulsed with passion—said,

"I shall require your services no longer,

We'll trust the rest to Providence." On that

I left the house, determined—to behold

Once more the vision that had moved me so.

But though for weeks I hover'd round the shrine

In which my treasure dwelt, I ne'er saw aught