satisfied of my
orthodoxy, he would not delay in removing my name from his church-doors,
and I concluded by begging him to hand the enclosed letter to the
Chevalier Mengs.

To the painter I wrote that I felt that I had deserved the shameful
insult he had given me by my great mistake in acceding to his request to
honour him by staying in his house. However, as a good Christian who had
just received the Holy Communion, I told him that his brutal behaviour
was forgiven; but I bade him to take to heart the line, well known to all
honest people, and doubtless unknown to him:

'Turpius ejicitur quam non admittitur hospes.'

After sending the letter I told the ambassador what had happened, to
which he replied,--

"I am not at all surprised at what you tell me. Mengs is only liked for
his talents in painting; in everything else he is well known to be little
better than a fool."

As a matter of fact he had only asked me to stay with him to gratify his
own vanity. He knew that all the town was talking of my imprisonment and
of the satisfaction the Count of Aranda had accorded me, and he wanted
people to think that his influence had obtained the favour that had been
shewn me. Indeed, he had said in a moment of exaltation that I should
have compelled the Alcade Messa to escort me not to my own house but to
his, as it was in his house that I had been arrested.

Mengs was an exceedingly ambitious and a very jealous man; he hated all
his brother painters. His colour and design were excellent, but his
invention was very weak, and invention is as necessary to a great painter
as a great poet.

I happened to say to him one day, "Just as every poet should be a
painter, so every painter should be a poet;" and he got quite angry,
thinking that I was alluding to his weakness of imagination, which he
felt but would not acknowledge.

He was an ignorant man, and liked to pass for a scholar; he sacrificed to
Bacchus and Comus, and would fain be thought sober; he was lustful,
bad-tempered, envious, and miserly, but yet would be considered a
virtuous man. He loved hard work, and this forced him to abstain, as a
rule, from dinner, as he drank so inordinately at that meal that he could
do nothing after it. When he dined out he had to drink nothing but water,
so as not to compromise his reputation for temperance. He spoke four
languages, and all badly, and could not even write his native tongue with
correctness; and yet he claimed perfection