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220 whether you like it or not, I assure you. And let us suppose that there are some there (not cM, that would be a serious matter), but the best and apparently most yielding, Narella, for instance. Here then you liave a true tetc-a-tete, quickly arranged without ceremonious preliminaries, with- out squeamishness and thinking that such liberty of action is usually coupled with the same liberty of virtue, stretched out on one hand, forced on the other. If you offer your lips and are sympatiietic to her, I do not say that you may not ])erliaps snatch a kiss. But I am now digressing, and all this has nothing to do with my task. I wislied to tell you about the models, not their chroni- cles, which may be beautiful, ugly, pure, or the reverse, but which do not concern us. Some unfortu- nate or lucky daugliters of Eve, therefore, who come down from their mountains, rougli, stu))id, ignorant of everything, to place in the artistic mar- ket the good name of their beauty, and the cost of their in- credible steadfast- ness, are brought suddenly face to face with great doubt, the rocks and deep precipices of their calling. They are brought generally from Ciociaria, the valley of the Lire, Sabina, and sometimes from dis- tant Abruzzo, and accompanied by the person who enrolls them, who is almost always another model, already broken to the business, with a tliorough practical knowledge of places, and with numerous friends and acquaintances amongthe artists. Scarcely arrived at Rome, they are deprived of the costume of their countrv and dressed in another called usu- Uy ' C/ociara,^ the well-known traditional costume which Italy lias assumed as her own. The person who has enrolled lier often introduces her by tak- ing lier to this or that studio, othei-s are satisfied w ith placing her in some of the frequented or custo- mary places of show, which is, as I have al- ready said, the Piazza or steps of the ' Trinita dei Monti,' where the artists go to arrange the number of sittings, though not the price, which is fixed at five lire per day. This has existed for centuries; Raphael, Micliel- angelo, Poussin, " - the divine Cellini, followed by a train of their pupils, trod these same stairs and paused in the same way before a Bibbiana, Lucia, or Narella of former days, and these beautiful and silly girls, ignorant that they were in the })resence of marvels of intellectual power, would count their time to a minute and dispute about it as they do to-day. Truly what did it matter to them whether their pictures, master- pieces of art, should adorn the halls of a palace or the shop of thepork-butcher, at the corner of the street ? It may be, but this is very rare, they have an air of pride or a flash of greediness

when a fortunate or story-telling artist tells them that he lias sold their likeness at a good price.

In summer when the artists leave Rome for the country, the models return again to their hills, counting their lioard of money, boasting in their own way, and making the boldest plans ; their gains to a areat extent reduced by the demands of the one who lias introduced theni. They return to their spade, to their sheep, to their fields, to the