occasional visit of the _caramei_ man with his
brass tray of candied fruit, impaled on thin sticks, like little birds
on a skewer, which led us into our one extravagance.

Had the old room been seedier and duller--dull our company never was--I
still would have seen it through the glamour of youth and thought it the
one place in which to study Venice and Venetian life. But nobody who
ever sat there with us could have complained of dulness so long as
Duveneck presided at our table. In Duveneck's case I cannot help
breaking my golden rule never to speak in print of the living--rules
were made to be broken. And why shouldn't I? I might as well not write
at all about our nights in Venice as to leave him out of them, he who
held them together and fashioned them into what they were. In the
_Atlantic_, as a makeshift, I called him Inglehart, the disguise under
which he figures in one of Howells's novels. But why not call him
boldly by his name when Inglehart is the thinnest and flimsiest of
masks, as friends of his were quick to tell me, and Duveneck means so
much more to all who know--and all who do not know are not worth
bothering about. It was only yesterday at San Francisco that the artists
of America gave an unmistakable proof of what their opinion of Duveneck
is now. In the Eighties "the boys" already thought as much of him and a
hundred times more.

Duveneck, as I remember him then--I have seen him but once since--was
large, fair, golden-haired, with long drooping golden moustache, of a
type apt to suggest indolence and indifference. As he lolled against the
red velvet cushions smoking his Cavour, enjoying the talk of others as
much as his own or more--for he had the talent of eloquent silence when
he chose to cultivate it--his eyes half shut, smiling with casual
benevolence, he may have looked to a stranger incapable of action, and
as if he did not know whether he was alone or not, and cared less. And
yet he had a big record of activity behind him, young as he was; he
always inspired activity in others, he was rarely without a large and
devoted following. He it was who drew "the boys" to Munich, then from
Munich to Florence, and then from Florence to Venice, and "the boys"
have passed into the history of American Art and the history of
Venice--wouldn't that give me away and explain who he was if I called
him Inglehart dozens of times over? And he also it was who packed them
off again before they learnt how easy it is