es were
out. He got up, walked downstairs, asked for beer, drank it to the
dregs, and fell dead with the glass in his hand--the first to die, the
first freed from his agony. Of the nine, but two survived. Seven lay
with their hut, a charred heap upon the ground, before the laughing
crowd realized what a pageant of horror Fate had planned for them.

Munich stories, before the night was over, had to be washed down with
Munich beer, which, at that time as still, I fancy, was best at Bauer's.
By some unwritten law, inscrutable as the written, it was decreed that,
though I might sit all evening the only woman at our table in the
_Orientale_--oftener than not the only woman in the _cafe_--it was not
"the thing" for me to go on to Bauer's. Therefore, first, the whole
company would see me home. It was a short stroll along the _Riva_, but
the Lagoon, dim and shadowy, stretched away beyond us, dimmer islands
resting on its waters, the lights of the boats sprinkling it with gold
under the high Venetian sky sprinkled with stars; and so beautiful was
it, and so sweet the April night, that the men from Munich could not
hold out against the enchantment of Venice in spring. I felt it a
concession when McFarlane admitted the loveliness of Venice by
starlight, and his languor dropped from him under the spell, and I knew
the game of boredom was up when, in this starlight, he decided that,
after all, there might be more in the Tintorettos than he thought if
only he had time to study them. But Easter holidays do not last for
ever, and the day soon came when the men from Munich had to go back to
where all was for the best in the best of all towns, but where no doubt,
on the principle that we always prefer what we have not got at the
moment, they told "the fellows" in the _Bier Kellars_ that only in
Venice was life worth while, that Rubens was dingy, and that they
guessed they could do with Tintoretto.

V

Somehow, we were never the same after they left us; not, I fancy,
because we missed them, but because we could hold out still less than
they against the spring. When the sun was so warm and the air so soft,
when in the little canals wistaria bloomed over high brick walls, when
boatloads of flowers came into Venice with the morning, when at noon the
_Riva_ was strewn with sleepers--then indoors and work became an
impertinence. On the slightest excuse J. and Duveneck no longer shut
themselves in the studio, I gave up collecting material