am a pupil of Guido
Reni."

"Well, good Antonio," said Salvator, a little sharply, as his manner
sometimes was. "If that is so, you have had great teachers; so, no
doubt, in spite of your surgical skill, you may be a great pupil of
theirs too. Only what I do not understand is, how you, as a pupil of
the gentle and tender Guido (whom, perhaps, as pupils in their
enthusiasm sometimes do--you even outdo in tenderness, in your work),
how you can hold me to be a master in my art at all."

Antonio coloured at those words of Salvator's; in fact, they had about
them a ring of jeering irony.

Antonio answered: "Let me lay aside all bashfulness, which might close
my lips. Let me speak freely out exactly what is in my mind. Salvator,
I have never revered a master so wholly from out the very depths of my
being as I do you. It is the often superhuman grandeur of the ideas
which I admire in your works. You see, and comprehend, and grasp the
profoundest secrets of Nature. You read, and understand, the marvellous
hieroglyphs of her rocks, her trees, her waterfalls; you hear her
mighty voices; you interpret her language, and can transcribe what she
says to you. Yes, transcription is what I would call your bold and
vivid style of working. Man, with his doings, contents you not; you
look at him only as being in the lap of Nature, and in so far as his
inmost being is conditioned by her phenomena. Therefore, Salvator, it
is in marvellous combinations of landscape with figure that you are so
wondrous great. Historical painting places limits which hem your
flight, to your disadvantage."

"You tell me this, Antonio," said Salvator, "as the envious historical
painters do, who throw landscape to me by way of a _bonne-bouche_, that
I may occupy myself in chewing it, and abstain from tearing their
flesh. Do I not know the human figure, and everything appertaining to
it? However, all those silly slanders, echoed from others----"

"Do not be indignant, dear master," answered Antonio. "I do not repeat
things blindly after other folks, and least of all should I pay any
attention to the opinions of our masters here in Rome just now. Who
could help admiring the daring drawing, the marvellous expression, and
particularly the lively action, of your figures! One sees that you do
not work from the stiff, awkward model, or from the dead lay figure,
but that you are, yourself, your own living model, and that you draw
and paint the figure which you place