in, high voice,
obscene verses which contrasted strangely with her apparent timidity.
This was her charm and the audience received her atrocious words with
roars of delight, contenting themselves with this, without demanding
that she dance, respecting her hieratic stiffness.

When the painter saw her appear he nudged his friend.

He did not dare to speak, waiting for his opinion anxiously. He
followed his inspection out of the corner of his eye.

His friend was merciful.

"Yes, she is something like her. Her eyes,--figure,--expression; she
reminds me of her. She is very much, like her. But the monkey face she
is making now! The words! No, that destroys all likeness."

And as if he were angry that that little girl without any voice and
without any sense of shame, should be compared to the sweet Josephina,
he commented with sarcastic admiration on all the cynical expressions
with which she ended her couplets.

"Very pretty! Very refined!"

But Renovales, deaf to these ironical remarks, absorbed in the
contemplation of "Fregolina," kept on poking him and whispering:

"It's she, isn't it? Just exactly; the same body. And besides, the girl
has some talent; she's funny."

Cotoner nodded ironically: "Yes, very." And when he found that Mariano
wanted to stay for the next act and did not move from his seat, he
though of leaving him. Finally he stayed, stretching out in his seat
with the determination to have a nap, lulled by the music and the cries
of the audience.

An impatient hand aroused him from his comfortable doze. "Pepe, Pepe."
He shook his head and opened his eyes ill-naturedly. "What's the
matter?" In Renovales' face he saw a honeyed, treacherous smile, some
folly that he wanted to propose in the most pleasing manner.

"I thought we might go behind the scenes for a minute: we could see her
at close range."

His friend answered him indignantly. Mariano thought he was a young
buck; he forgot how he looked. That woman would laugh at them, she
would assume the air of the Chaste Susanna, besieged by the two old men.

Renovales was silent, but in a little while he once more aroused his
friend from his nap.

"You might go in alone, Pepe. You know more about these things than I
do. You are more daring. You might tell her that I want to paint her
portrait. Think, a portrait with my signature!"

Cotoner started to laugh, in sheer admiration of the princely simplicity
with which the master gave him the commissi