alls "his old friend and colour-grinder," Urbino,
in the direction of the Thermae. So the lackey, having the good chance
to meet him, brought him at once to the convent. The Marchioness made
him sit between her and Messer Tolomei, while Francis took up his
position at a little distance. The conversation then began, but
Vittoria Colonna had to use the tact for which she was celebrated
before she could engage the wary old man on a serious treatment of his
own art.

He opened his discourse by defending painters against the common
charge of being "eccentric in their habits, difficult to deal with,
and unbearable; whereas, on the contrary, they are really most
humane." Common people do not consider, he remarked, that really
zealous artists are bound to abstain from the idle trivialities and
current compliments of society, not because they are haughty or
intolerant by nature, but because their art imperiously claims the
whole of their energies. "When such a man shall have the same leisure
as you enjoy, then I see no objection to your putting him to death if
he does not observe your rules of etiquette and ceremony. You only
seek his company and praise him in order to obtain honour through him
for yourselves, nor do you really mind what sort of man he is, so long
as kings and emperors converse with him. I dare affirm that any artist
who tries to satisfy the better vulgar rather than men of his own
craft, one who has nothing singular, eccentric, or at least reputed to
be so, in his person, will never become a superior talent. For my
part, I am bound to confess that even his Holiness sometimes annoys
and wearies me by begging for too much of my company. I am most
anxious to serve him, but, when there is nothing important going
forward, I think I can do so better by studying at home than by
dancing attendance through a whole day on my legs in his
reception-rooms. He allows me to tell him so; and I may add that the
serious occupations of my life have won for me such liberty of action
that, in talking to the Pope, I often forget where I am, and place my
hat upon my head. He does not eat me up on that account, but treats me
with indulgence, knowing that it is precisely at such times that I am
working hard to serve him. As for solitary habits, the world is right
in condemning a man who, out of pure affectation or eccentricity,
shuts himself up alone, loses his friends, and sets society against
him. Those, however, who act in this way