lasquez worked for three
_pesetas_ a day and Goya painted his portraits for a couple of
doubloons. Deceit, modernism, the audacity of the younger generation
that lacked scruples, the ignorance of the simpletons that believe the
newspapers! The only good thing was right there before him. And once
more shrugging his shoulders scornfully, he lost his expression of
ironical protest and returned to his thousandth copy of _Los Borrachos_.

Renovales, seeing that the curiosity about him was diminishing, entered
the little hall that contained the picture of _Las Meninas_. There was
Tekli in front of the famous canvas that occupies the whole back of the
room, seated before his easel, with his white hat pushed back to leave
free his throbbing brow that was contracted with a tenacious insistence
on accuracy.

Seeing Renovales, he rose hastily, leaving his palette on the piece of
oil-cloth that protected the floor from spots of paint. Dear master! How
thankful he was to him for this visit! And he showed him the copy,
minutely accurate but without the wonderful atmosphere, without the
miraculous realism of the original. Renovales approved with a nod; he
admired the patient toil of that gentle ox of art, whose furrows were
always alike, of geometric precision, without the slightest negligence
or the least attempt at originality.

"_Ti piace?_" he asked anxiously, looking into his eyes to divine his
thoughts. "_E vero? E vero?_" he repeated with the uncertainty of a
child who fears that he is being deceived.

And suddenly calmed by the evidences of Renovales' approval, that kept
growing more extravagant to conceal his indifference, the Hungarian
grasped both of his hands and lifted them to his breast.

_"Sono contento, maestro, sono contento."_

He did not want to let Renovales go. Since he had had the generosity to
come and see his work, he could not let him go away, they would lunch
together at the hotel where he lived. They would open a bottle of
Chianti to recall their life in Rome; they would talk of the merry
Bohemian days of their youth, of those comrades of various nationalities
that used to gather in the Cafe del Greco,--some already dead, the rest
scattered through Europe and America, a few celebrated, the majority
vegetating in the schools of their native land, dreaming of a final
masterpiece before which death would probably overtake them.

Renovales felt overcome by the insistence of the Hungarian, who seized
his