ellow,
and the Roman ladies accordingly did speak of him as their _caro
puppazetto_.

But now those days were over, and a German painter, who saw him
crossing the Piazza di Spagna, said of him, not without reason, that he
looked as if some stalwart fellow of six feet high had run away from
his own head and it had fallen on to the shoulders of a little
marionette Pulcinello, who had now to go about with it as his own. This
strange little figure had thrust itself into a great mass of Venetian
damask, all over great flowers, made into a dressing-gown, and girt
itself about, right under the breast, with a broad leather girdle, in
which was stuck a rapier three ells long; and above his snow-white
periwig there clung a high-peaked head-dress, not much unlike the
obelisk in the Piazza San Pietro. As the periwig went meandering like a
tangled web, thick and broad, over his back and shoulders, it might
well have been taken for the cocoon out of which the beautiful insect
had issued.

The worthy Splendiano Accoramboni glared through his spectacles, first
at the sick Salvator, and then on Dame Caterina, whom he drew to one
side. "There," he said, in a scarce audible whisper, "lies the great
painter Salvator Rosa sick unto death in your house, Dame Caterina, and
nothing but my skill can save him! Tell me, though, how long it is
since he came to you? Has he plenty of grand, beautiful pictures with
him?"

"Ah! dear Signor Dottore," answered the old woman, "this dear boy of
mine only came to-night, and, as concerns the pictures, I know nothing
about them as yet. But there's a large box downstairs, which he told
me, before he got to be unconscious as he is now, to take the greatest
care of. I should suppose there is a grand picture in it which he has
painted in Naples."

Now this was a fib which Dame Caterina told; but we shall soon see what
good reason she had for telling it to the doctor.

"Ah, ah! Yes, yes!" said the doctor, stroking his beard. Then he
solemnly strode up as close to the patient as his long rapier, which
banged against and entangled itself with the chairs and tables,
admitted of his doing, took his hand and felt his pulse, sighing and
groaning as he did so in a manner which sounded wonderful enough in the
deep silence of reverential awe which prevailed. He then named a
hundred and twenty diseases, in Latin and Greek, which Salvator
had not, then about the same number which he might possibly have
contracted, a