lessness
were for him the internal goad of inspiration.

The longing for fame tormented him; as the days went by and his name was
not mentioned, he believed that he had come to an obscure death. He
fancied that the youths turned their backs on him, to look in the
opposite direction, storing him away among the respected dead, admiring
other masters. His artistic pride made him seek opportunities for
notoriety, with the guilelessness of a tyro. He, who scoffed so at the
official honors and the "sheepfold" of the academies, suddenly
remembered that several years before, after one of his successes, they
had elected him a member of the Academy of Fine Arts.

Cotoner was astonished to see the importance he began to attach to this
unsolicited distinction, at which he had always laughed.

"That was a boy's joking," said the master gravely. "Life cannot always
be taken as a laughing matter. We must be serious, Pepe; we are getting
on in years, and we must not always make fun of things that are
essentially respectable."

Besides, he charged himself with rudeness. Those worthy personages, whom
he had often compared with all kinds of animals, no doubt thought it
strange that the years went by without his caring to occupy his seat. He
must go to the academic reception. And Cotoner, at his bidding, attended
to all the details, from taking the news to those worthies, in order
that they might set the date for the function, to arranging the speech
of the new Academician. For Renovales learned with some misgiving that
he must read a speech. He, accustomed to handling the brush and poorly
trained in his childhood, took up the pen with timidity, and even in his
letters to the Alberca woman preferred to represent his passionate
phrases with amusing pictures, to embodying them in words.

The old Bohemian got him out of this difficulty. He knew his Madrid
well. The secrets of the world which are detailed in the newspapers had
no mysteries for him. Renovales should have as magnificent a speech as
any one.

And one afternoon he brought to the studio a certain Isidro Maltrana,[A]
a diminutive, ugly young fellow with a huge head, and an air of
self-satisfaction and boldness that disgusted Renovales from the very
first. He was well dressed but the lapels of his coat were dirty with
ashes, and its collar was strewn with dandruff. The painter observed
that he smelt of wine. At first he pompously styled him master, but
after a few words he cal