who set himself forthwith to win my heart and turn my head; nay, and he
might have done so, but that he confessed from the first that he had a
fair young wife in Venice, albeit he was already craving for some new
love.

Thus through him again I learned how light a touch is needed to
overthrow a man's true faith; and when I minded me of Herdegen and
Ann, and of this Giacomo--who was nevertheless a goodly and well-graced
man--and his young wife, meseemed that the woman who might win the love
of a highly-gifted soul must ofttimes pay for that great joy with much
heaviness and heartache.

Howbeit, I mind me in right true love of the mirthful spirit and
manifold sportiveness which marked our fellowship with the Italian
limner; and after that I had once given him plainly and strongly to
understand that the heart of a Nuremberg damsel was no light thing or
plaything, and her very lips a sanctuary which her husband should one
day find pure, all went well betwixt us.

The picture of Ann, the first he painted, showed her as Saint Cecelia
hearkening to music which sounds from Heaven in her ears. Two sweet
angel babes floated on thin clouds above her head, singing hymns to a
mandoline and viol. Thus had my lord Cardinal commanded, and the work
was so excellent that, if the Saint herself vouchsafed to look down on
it out of Heaven, of a certainty it was pleasing in her eyes.

As to mine own presentment; at first I weened that I would be limned in
my peach-colored brocade gown with silver dolphins thereon, by reason
that I had worn that weed in the early morn after the dance, when Hans
spoke his last loving farewell at the door of our house. But whereas one
cold day I went into Master Giacomo's work-chamber in a red hood and a
green cloak bordered with sable fur, he would thenceforth paint me in
no other guise. At first he was fain to present me as going forth to
church; then he deemed that he might not show forth my very look and
seeming if I were limned with downcast head and eyes. Therefor he gave
me the falcon on my hand which had erewhile been my lover's gift. My
eyes were set on the distance as though I watched for a heron; thus I
seemed in truth like one hunting--"chaste Diana," quoth the painter,
minding him of the reproofs I had given him so often. But it would be a
hard task to tell of all the ways whereby the painter would provoke me
to reprove him. When the likeness was no more than half done, he painted
his own merry