emy. I walked back to his lodging with him, and he was as mild
as midsummer moonlight. He has the ineffable something that charms and
convinces; my last word about him shall not be a harsh one."

Shortly after sending his letter, going one day into his friend's
studio, he found Roderick suffering from the grave infliction of a visit
from Mr. Leavenworth. Roderick submitted with extreme ill grace to being
bored, and he was now evidently in a state of high exasperation. He had
lately begun a representation of a lazzarone lounging in the sun; an
image of serene, irresponsible, sensuous life. The real lazzarone, he
had admitted, was a vile fellow; but the ideal lazzarone--and his own
had been subtly idealized--was a precursor of the millennium.

Mr. Leavenworth had apparently just transferred his unhurrying gaze to
the figure.

"Something in the style of the Dying Gladiator?" he sympathetically
observed.

"Oh no," said Roderick seriously, "he 's not dying, he 's only drunk!"

"Ah, but intoxication, you know," Mr. Leavenworth rejoined, "is not a
proper subject for sculpture. Sculpture should not deal with transitory
attitudes."

"Lying dead drunk is not a transitory attitude! Nothing is more
permanent, more sculpturesque, more monumental!"

"An entertaining paradox," said Mr. Leavenworth, "if we had time to
exercise our wits upon it. I remember at Florence an intoxicated figure
by Michael Angelo which seemed to me a deplorable aberration of a
great mind. I myself touch liquor in no shape whatever. I have traveled
through Europe on cold water. The most varied and attractive lists of
wines are offered me, but I brush them aside. No cork has ever been
drawn at my command!"

"The movement of drawing a cork calls into play a very pretty set
of muscles," said Roderick. "I think I will make a figure in that
position."

"A Bacchus, realistically treated! My dear young friend, never trifle
with your lofty mission. Spotless marble should represent virtue, not
vice!" And Mr. Leavenworth placidly waved his hand, as if to exorcise
the spirit of levity, while his glance journeyed with leisurely
benignity to another object--a marble replica of the bust of Miss Light.
"An ideal head, I presume," he went on; "a fanciful representation of
one of the pagan goddesses--a Diana, a Flora, a naiad or dryad? I often
regret that our American artists should not boldly cast off that extinct
nomenclature."

"She is neither a naiad nor a dry