ed all their
efforts to fan the flame. "See you," they said, "he was one of
Masaniello's doughty partisans, and is ready to turn his hand to any
deed of mischief, to any disreputable enterprise; we shall be the next
to suffer from his presence in the city; he is a dangerous man."

And the jealous faction who had leagued together against Salvator did
actually succeed in stemming the tide of his prosperous career. He sent
forth from his studio one picture after the other, all bold in
conception, and splendidly executed; but the so-called critics shrugged
their shoulders, now pointing out that the hills were too blue, the
trees too green, the figures now too long, now too broad, finding fault
everywhere where there was no fault to be found, and seeking to detract
from his hard-earned reputation in all the ways they could think of.
Especially bitter in their persecution of him were the Academicians of
St. Luke, who could not forget how he took them in about the surgeon;
they even went beyond the limits of their own profession, and decried
the clever stanzas which Salvator at that time wrote, hinting very
plainly that he did not cultivate his fruit on his own garden soil, but
plundered that of his neighbours. For these reasons, therefore,
Salvator could not manage to surround himself with the splendour which
he had lived amidst formerly in Rome. Instead of being visited by the
most eminent of the Romans in a large studio, he had to remain with
Dame Caterina and his green fig-tree; but amid these poor surroundings
he frequently found both consolation and tranquillity of mind.

Salvator took the malicious machinations of his enemies to heart more
than he ought to have done; he even began to feel that an insidious
disease, resulting from chagrin and dejection, was gnawing at his
vitals. In this unhappy frame of mind he designed and executed two
large pictures which excited quite an uproar in Rome. Of these one
represented the transitoriness of all earthly things, and in the
principal figure, that of a wanton female bearing all the indications
of her degrading calling about her, was recognised the mistress of one
of the cardinals; the other portrayed the Goddess of Fortune dispensing
her rich gifts. But cardinals' hats, bishops' mitres, gold medals,
decorations of orders, were falling upon bleating sheep, braying asses,
and other such like contemptible animals, whilst well-made men in
ragged clothes were vainly straining their