can be. It was at that time that he
built what envious people called his "pantheon"; a magnificent mansion
behind the iron grating of the Retiro.

He had a violent desire to build a home after his own heart and image,
like those mollusks that build a shell with the substance of their
bodies so that it may serve both as a dwelling and a defense. There
awakened in him that longing for show, for pompous, swaggering, amusing
originality that lies dormant in the mind of every artist. At first he
planned a reproduction of Rubens' palace in Antwerp, open _loggie_ for
studios, leafy gardens covered with flowers at all seasons, and in the
paths, gazelles, giraffes, birds of bright plumage, like flying flowers,
and other exotic animals which this great painter used as models in his
desire to copy Nature in all its magnificence.

But he was forced to give up this dream, on account of the nature of the
building sites in Madrid, a few thousand feet of barren, chalky soil,
bounded by a wretched fence and as dry as only Castile can be. Since
this Rubenesque ostentation was not possible, he took refuge in
Classicism and in a little garden he erected a sort of Greek temple that
should serve at once as a dwelling and a studio. On the triangular
pediment rose three tripods like torch-holders, that gave the house the
appearance of a commemorative tomb. But in order that those who stopped
outside the grating might make no mistake, the master had garlands of
laurel, palettes surrounded with crowns, carved on the stone facade, and
in the midst of this display of simple modesty a short inscription in
gold letters of average size--"Renovales." Exactly like a store. Inside,
in two studios where no one ever painted and which led to the real
working studio, the finished pictures were exhibited on easels covered
with antique textures, and callers gazed with wonder at the collection
of properties fit for a theater,--suits of armor, tapestries, old
standards hanging from the ceiling, show-cases full of ancient
knick-knacks, deep couches with canopies of oriental stuffs supported by
lances, century old coffers and open secretaries shining with the pale
gold of their rows of drawers.

These studios where no one studied were like the luxurious line of
waiting rooms in the house of a doctor who charges twenty dollars for a
consultation, or like the anterooms, furnished in dark leather with
venerable pictures, of a famous lawyer, who never opens his mo