and he asked me what was the real purport of my
attentions. Then I frankly confessed that I loved Marianna with all my
heart, and that the greatest earthly happiness I could conceive was a
union with her. Whereupon Capuzzi, after measuring me from top to toe,
burst out in a guffaw of contempt, and declared that he never had any
idea that such lofty thoughts could haunt the brain of a paltry barber.
I was almost boiling with rage; I said he knew very well that I was no
paltry barber but rather a good surgeon, and, moreover, in so far as
concerned the noble art of painting, a faithful pupil of the great
Annibal Caracci and of the unrivalled Guido Reni. But the infamous
Capuzzi only replied by a still louder guffaw of laughter, and in his
horrible falsetto squeaked, 'See here, my sweet Signor barber, my
excellent Signor surgeon, my honoured Annibal Caracci, my beloved Guido
Reni, be off to the devil, and don't ever show yourself here again, if
you don't want your legs broken.' Therewith the cranky, knock-kneed old
fool laid hold of me with no less an intention than to kick me out of
the room, and hurl me down the stairs. But that, you know, was past
everything. With ungovernable fury I seized the old fellow and tripped
him up, so that his legs stuck uppermost in the air; and there I left
him screaming aloud, whilst I ran down the stairs and out of the
house-door; which, I need hardly say, has been closed to me ever since.

"And that's how matters stood when you came to Rome and when Heaven
inspired Father Boniface with the happy idea of bringing me to you.
Then so soon as your clever trick had brought me the success for which
I had so long been vainly striving, that is, when I was accepted by the
Academy of St. Luke, and all Rome was heaping up praise and honour upon
me to a lavish extent, I went straightway to the old gentleman and
suddenly presented myself before him in his own room, like a
threatening apparition. Such at least he must have thought me, for he
grew as pale as a corpse, and retreated behind a great table, trembling
in every limb. And in a firm and earnest way I represented to him that
it was not now a paltry barber or a surgeon, but a celebrated painter
and Academician of St. Luke, Antonio Scacciati, to whom he would not, T
hoped, refuse the hand of his niece Marianna. You should have seen into
what a passion the old fellow flew. He screamed; he flourished his arms
about like one possessed of devils; he yel