"Good-day! Is mamma upstairs?"

"No. Mamma has gone bicycling with M. de Sinten."

Silence followed.

"Ah! mamma has gone bicycling with De Sinten?" repeated Svirski. "Well!"

And after a while he added,--

"True! she expected me only at four o'clock."

Then he began to laugh.

"The tragedy ends in a farce. But this, however, is the Riviera! Still what an ass I am!"

"Will you wait for mamma?" asked Romulus.

"No. Listen, my boys. Tell your mamma that I came to say good-bye to her, and that I am sorry not to find her, because I am going on a journey to-day."

Then he gave directions to return to Nice. That evening he received one telegram more, in which there was the single word, "Scoundrel!"

After reading it he fell into excellent humor, for the telegram was not signed this time, "Morphine."

CHAPTER X.

Two weeks later the picture "Sleep and Death" was finished. Svirski began another which he intended to call "Euterpe." But his work did not advance. He said that the light was too sharp; and for whole sittings, instead of painting, he was looking at the bright face of Panna Cervi.

He seemed to be seeking the proper expression for Euterpe. He gazed so persistently that the lady grew red under the influence of his eyes; he felt in his breast an increasing disquiet. At last, on a certain morning, he said suddenly, in a kind of strange, altered voice,--

"I notice that you ladies love Italy immensely."

"We and grandfather," answered Panna Cervi.

"I, too. Half my life passes in Rome and in Florence. There the light is not so sharp at present, and it would be possible to paint whole days.

Oh, yes! Who could help loving Italy! And do you know what I think sometimes?"

Panna Maria lowered her head, and, opening her lips somewhat, began to look at him carefully, as she always did when listening to him.

"I think that every man has two fatherlands: one his own, the nearer, and the other Italy. Only think, all culture, all art, all science, everything came from there. Let us take, for instance, the Renaissance.... Really, all are, if not the children, at least the grandchildren of Italy."

"True," answered Panna Maria.

"I do not know whether I mentioned that I have a studio in the Via Margutta in Rome, and that when the light becomes too sharp in this studio I am yearning for that one. Here it is--if we should all go to Rome--that would be perfect! Afterward we could go to Warsaw."

"There is no way to carry out that plan," answered Panna Maria, with a sad smile.

But he approached her quickly, and, taking her two hands, began to speak, looking at her with the greatest tenderness in his eyes.

"There is a way, dear lady, there is a way! Do you not divine it?"

And when she grew pale from happiness, he pressed both her palms to his breast, and added,--

"Give me thyself and thine--"

THAT THIRD WOMAN.

CHAPTER I.

The rent for that studio in which Antek Svyatetski and I lived and painted, was unpaid, first, because we had about five rubles joint capital, and, second, because we felt a sincere repugnance to paying house-rent.

People call us artists squanderers; as for me, I would rather drink away my money than waste it in paying a house-owner.

Our house-owner was not a bad fellow though, and, moreover, we found means of defence against him.

When he came to dun us, which was usually in the morning, Antek, who slept on a straw bed on the floor, and covered himself with a Turkish curtain used by us as a background for portraits, would rise to a sitting posture, and say in sepulchral tones,--

"It is well that I see you, for I dreamed that you were dead."

The house-owner, who was superstitious, and dreaded death evidently, was confused at once and beyond measure. Antek would throw himself back on the straw bed, stretch his legs, fold his hands across his breast, and continue,--

"You were just like this; you had white gloves on your hands, the fingers were too long; on your feet patent-leather boots; for the rest, you were not changed much."

Then I would add, "Sometimes those dreams come true."

It seems that this "sometimes" brought the man to despair. At last he would fall into a rage, slam the door after him; and we could hear him rush downstairs four steps at a time, swearing by what the world stands on. Still the honest soul did not like to send the house-bailiff to us.

In truth, there was not much to take; and he had calculated that were he to bring other artists to that studio, and the kitchen adjoining, the story would be the same, or still worse.

Our sharp method grew dull in time, however. The house-owner became accustomed to the thought of death. Antek had the idea to finish three pictures in the style of Wurtz, "Death," "Burial," and "Waking from Lethargy." Naturally our man was to figure in all of them.

Such funereal subjects became a specialty for Antek, who, as he says himself, paints "corpses big, medium, and small size." This is the reason, of course, why no one buys his pictures; for, subjects aside, he has talent. He has sent to the Paris Salon two "corpses," and as I also sent my "Jews on the Vistula," which in the catalogue of the Salon are christened "Jews on the Babylon," we were both waiting impatiently for the decision of the _jury_.

Of course Antek foresaw that the worst would happen, that the _jury_ would be made up of perfect idiots, and even if not made up of idiots, I am an idiot, he is an idiot, our pictures are idiotic, and reward for them would be the summit of idiocy!

How much blood that monkey has spoiled in me during the two years that we have lived in one studio, I cannot tell.

Antek's whole ambition is to pass for a moral "corpse." In company he poses as a drunkard, which he is not. He will pour down two or three tiny glasses of vodka, and turn to see if we are looking; if not sure that we are, he will punch one of us with his elbow frown and say, in subterranean tones,--

"Yes, how low I have fallen, that far! Is it possible?"