uth
without carrying off a large portion of his client's fortune. People who
waited in these two studios spacious as the nave of a church, with the
silent majesty which comes with the lapse of years, were brought to the
necessary frame of mind to make them submit to the enormous prices the
master demanded.

Renovales had "made good" and he could rest calmly, as his admirers
said. And still the master was gloomy; his nature, embittered by his
years of silent suffering, broke out in violent fits of temper.

The slightest attack by some insignificant enemy was enough to send him
into a rage. His pupils thought it was due to the fact that he was
getting old. His struggles had so aged him that with his heavy beard and
his round shoulders he looked ten years older than he was.

In this white temple, on the pediment of which his name shone in letters
of glorious gold, he was not so happy as in the modest houses in Italy
or the little garret near the Plaza de Toros. All that was left of the
Josephina of the first months of his married life was a distant shadow.
The "_Maja Desnuda_" of the happy nights in Rome and Venice was nothing
but a memory. On her return to Spain the false stoutness of motherhood
had disappeared.

She grew thin, as if some hidden fire were devouring her; the flesh that
had covered her body with graceful curves melted away in the flames that
burned within her. The sharp angles and dark hollows of her skeleton
began to show beneath her pale, flabby flesh. Poor _"Maja Desnuda"!_
Her husband pitied her, attributing her decline to the struggles and
cares she had suffered when they first returned to Madrid.

For her sake, he was eager to conquer, to become rich, that he might
provide her with the comforts he had dreamed of. Her illness seemed to
be mental; it was neurasthenia, melancholia. The poor woman had suffered
without doubt at being condemned to a pauper's existence, in Madrid,
where she had once lived in comparative splendor, this time in a
wretched house, struggling with poverty, forced to perform the most
menial tasks. She complained of strange pains, her legs lost their
strength, she sank into a chair where she would stay motionless for
hours at a time, weeping without knowing why. Her digestion was poor;
for weeks her stomach refused all nourishment. At night she would toss
about in bed, unable to sleep and at daybreak she was up flitting about
the house with a feverish activity, turning things