of killing with one.

Gerard saw ruin staring him in the face.

He spent the afternoons picking up canzonets and mastering them. He laid
in playing cards to colour, and struck off a meal per day.

This last stroke of genius got him into fresh trouble.

In these "camere locande" the landlady dressed all the meals, though
the lodgers bought the provisions. So Gerard's hostess speedily detected
him, and asked him if he was not ashamed himself: by which brusque
opening, having made him blush and look scared, she pacified herself
all in a moment, and appealed to his good sense whether Adversity was a
thing to be overcome on an empty stomach.

"Patienza, my lad! times will mend; meantime I will feed you for the
love of heaven." (Italian for "gratis.")

"Nay, hostess," said Gerard, "my purse is not yet quite void, and it
would add to my trouble an if true folk should lose their due by me."

"Why, you are as mad as your neighbour Pietro, with his one bad
picture."

"Why, how know you 'tis a bad picture?"

"Because nobody will buy it. There is one that hath no gift. He will
have to don casque and glaive, and carry his panel for a shield."

Gerard pricked up his ears at this: so she told him more. Pietro had
come from Florence with money in his purse, and an unfinished picture;
had taken her one unfurnished room, opposite Gerard's, and furnished
it neatly. When his picture was finished, he received visitors and had
offers for it: though in her opinion liberal ones, he had refused so
disdainfully as to make enemies of his customers. Since then he had
often taken it out with him to try and sell, but had always brought it
back; and the last month, she had seen one movable after another go out
of his room, and now he wore but one suit, and lay at night on a great
chest. She had found this out only by peeping through the keyhole, for
he locked the door most vigilantly whenever he went out. "Is he afraid
we shall steal his chest, or his picture, that no soul in all Rome is
weak enough to buy?"

"Nay, sweet hostess; see you not 'tis his poverty he would screen from
view?"

"And the more fool he! Are all our hearts as ill as his? A might give us
a trial first, anyway."

"How you speak of him. Why, his case is mine; and your countryman to
boot."

"Oh, we Siennese love strangers. His case yours? Nay, 'tis just the
contrary. You are the comeliest youth ever lodged in this house; hair
like gold: he is a dark, sour-visaged l