d Cardinal Antonelli, much amused.

"Your Eminence will doubtless be kind enough to manage that I may have
liberty to finish it."

"You could not put off enlisting for a week, I suppose?"

Gouache looked annoyed; he hated the idea of waiting.

"I have taken too long to make up my mind already," he replied. "I must
make the plunge at once. I am convinced--your Eminence has convinced
me--that I have been very foolish."

"I certainly never intended to convince you of that," remarked the
Cardinal, with a smile.

"Very foolish," repeated Gouache, not heeding the interruption. "I have
talked great nonsense,--I scarcely know why--perhaps to try and find
where the sense really lay. I have dreamed so many dreams, so long, that
I sometimes think I am morbid. All artists are morbid, I suppose. It is
better to do anything active than to lose one's self in the slums of a
sickly imagination."

"I agree with you," answered the Cardinal; "but I do not think you
suffered from a sickly imagination,--I should rather call it abundant
than sickly. Frankly, I should be sorry to think that in following this
new idea you were in any way injuring the great career which, I am sure,
is before you; but, on the other hand, I cannot help wishing that a
greater number of young men would follow your example."

"Your Eminence approves, then?"

"Do you think you will make a good soldier?"

"Other artists have been good soldiers. There was Cellini--"

"Benvenuto Cellini said he made a good soldier; he said it himself, but
his reputation for veracity in other matters was doubtful, to say the
least. If he did not shoot the Connetable de Bourbon, it is very certain
that some one else did. Besides, a soldier in our times should be a very
different kind of man from the self-armed citizen of the time of Clement
the Ninth and the aforesaid Connetable. You will have to wear a uniform
and sleep on boards in a guard-house; you will have to be up early to
drill, and up late mounting guard, in wind and rain and cold. It is hard
work; I do not believe you have the constitution for it. Nevertheless,
the intention is good. You can try it, and if you fall ill I will see
that you have no difficulty in returning to your artist life."

"I do not mean to give it up," replied Gouache, in a tone of conviction.
"And as for my health, I am as strong as any one."

"Perhaps," said the Cardinal, doubtfully. "And when are you going to join
the corps?"

"In about an