Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/147

 the picture had proceeded, together with the artist's lack of skill, made this compromise a little difficult. The result was, indubitably, chaste, but there were those who might have queried, Was it art? Both the ceiling and the proscenium arch decorations were the labour of an Italian from Chicago, whose lifework up to that time had been the embellishment of saloons. He had been lured to Maple Valley by George S. Collins, who had amassed a vast fortune of over $75,000 through his incontestable talent for selling grain and hogs, and whose wife desired to transform her residence into a royal villa, or at least into something as near to a royal villa as could be managed in that locality at that period.

The drop curtain, painted in Chicago (the owner of the opera house did not seem willing to risk the chance of the Italian ruining a hundred dollars worth of canvas), wore a more professional air. The space in the centre, tastefully overhung by painted, draped, blue curtains, caught back by painted, gold ropes, was occupied by a representation of a picturesque Italian scene, not entirely identifiable, in which were to be discerned, in the background, a smoking volcano, a lake, cypress-trees, and, in the foreground, surmounted by a broken column, a flight of steps, on which a young shepherd lingered, playing his pipes, while a contadina, returning from the fountain bearing a water jar on her head, stopped to listen. This picture was framed on three sides by squares and oblongs con-