Visiting the museum one day in company with two artist friends, I pointed this head out to them as we were hastily passing through the room. Like myself, they were enchanted with the fragment, and lingered to sketch it. They were very long in making their sketches; and after they declared them finished, shut their books with a resolute air, walked briskly off, but returned again, one after the other, to take another look. At last I succeeded in dragging them away; but while we were examining another part of the collection, in an adjoining room, each disappeared in turn, and came back, after a few minutes’ absence, with the volunteered excuse that he had found it necessary to put a last touch on his drawing of the attractive fragment. When we left the museum both of my infatuated friends had made arrangements with the custodian to permit a moulder to come and take a cast of the head.

The island of Capri is the most delightful spot in the Mediterranean. Blessed with a fine climate, a comparatively fertile soil, and a contented population, it is one of the best places accessible to the ordinary traveller in which to spend a quiet season. In this refuge life does not sparkle, but stagnates. Tired nerves recover their tone in the eventless succession of lazy days. Overtaxed digestion regains its normal strength through the simple diet, the pure air, and the repose of mind and body which are found in this paradise. Of late years the island has become a great resort for artists of all nationalities. Many good studios are to be had there; plenty of trained models of both sexes and all ages are eager to work for trifling wages; living is cheap, rents are by no means exorbitant, and subjects for pictures abound at every step.

A few modern buildings of some pretensions to size and architectural style have been erected within the last twenty or thirty years, but the greater part of the houses on the island, both in the town of Capri and in the village of Anacapri, are very old and exceedingly simple in construction. The streets of the town are narrow and crooked, and twist about in a perfect maze of tufa walls and whitewashed façades, straggling away in all directions from the piazza. The dwellings of the poorer classes are jumbled together along these narrow streets as if space were very valuable. They overhang and even span the roadway at intervals, and frequently the flat roof of one house serves as a loggia, or broad balcony, for the one above it. Small gardens are sometimes cultivated on these housetops, and the bleating of goats and cackling of hens are often heard in the shrubbery there. Not the least among the many attractions of Capri are its historical relics. Ruined Roman villas and palaces abound all over the hills; traces of ancient baths and grottos of the nymphs may be seen along the water’s edge; and fragments of Roman architecture are built into every wall, and into almost every house. The peculiar geological formation of the island furnishes the excuse for a variety of short and pleasant excursions; for there are numbers of interesting caves, strange rock forms, and grandly picturesque cliffs and cañons within easy reach by sea or by land.

When I was in Capri, there was one remarkably pretty girl among the models, called Lisa. She was only fifteen years old, but, like the usual type of Southern maiden, was as fully developed as if she were three or four years older. Her father and mother were dead, and she lived with her great-grandmother in a small house of a single room in a narrow street which ran directly under my bedroom. None of the houses of the quarter where my studio and apartment were situated had glass in the windows, but the interiors were lighted, like those of the ancient Romans, by square holes provided with wooden shutters. From the rude window in my bedroom, and also from the loggia in front of the studio, I could look directly down into the small dwelling below, and at all times of the day could see the old woman knitting in the shadow just inside the open door, and Lisa flitting about, busy with the primitive housekeeping. Whenever I wanted the girl to sit for me, I had only to call down and she would come up to the studio. It takes but a few days to become intimately acquainted with the simple-hearted islanders, and in a short time the old woman grew very friendly and communicative. At my invitation she frequently came to sit on the loggia, whence she could look over the sea, towards the south, to watch for returning coral fishermen, or on the other side, to the north and east, where Naples shimmered in the sun, and Vesuvius reared its sombre cone. She was not comely to look upon, for she was wrinkled beyond belief, and her parchment skin was the color of oak-tanned leather. She often said that Lisa was the image of her own family, but I could trace no resemblance between the blooming maid and the withered dame. The chief beauty of the young girl’s face, or at least the most remarkable feature of it, was the eyes, which were of a deep-blue gray, almost as brilliant as the rich, dark ones common to the Italian type, but more unique and more charming in contrast with the olive-tinted skin and black hair. The old woman’s eyes were as dark as those of the generality of her race, and apparently but little dimmed by her great age. All over the island she had the reputation of being the oldest inhabitant; but as she could not remember the date of her birth—if, indeed, she ever knew it—and as there had been no records kept at the time she was born, there was no means of proving the truth or the falsity of the tales about her wonderful age. She bore everywhere the peculiar name of La Rubina di Tedesco—Tedesco’s Rubina—the significance of which, although it was variously explained by common tradition, had really been forgotten more than a generation before, and was now known only to herself. The islanders are fond of giving nicknames, and I should not have remarked this one among so many others if it had not been for the word Tedesco, which in Italian means German. My curiosity was excited on this account, to discover what the name really meant and why it had been given to her.

In the long summer twilights I used to talk with the old woman by the hour, or rather I used to listen to her by the hour, for without a word of encouragement from me she would drone on in her queer patois in the garrulous way very old people have, elaborating the details of the most trivial incidents, and rehearsing the intimate family history of all her numerous acquaintances. She looked upon me with the more favor because it happened that I was the only artist who employed Lisa, and consequently furnished all the money for the support of the small household. Relying on the position I held in her esteem as patron, and cannily increasing her obligation to me by various small presents, I schemed for a long time to make her tell the history of her own life. She had an aggravating way of either utterly ignoring all questions on this subject, or else of taking refuge in a series of wails on the change in the times and on the degeneracy of the islanders. By degrees and at long intervals I did, however, succeed in getting a full account of her early life and of the origin of her popular name.

Long ago, even long before any steamers were seen on the Bay of Naples, two young Germans—a sculptor and an architect—wandered down to Capri, to study the antiquities of the island. They were both captivated by the beauties of the spot, by the delights of the pastoral life they led there, and possibly also by the charms of the island maidens, who even then had a wide reputation for beauty, and they consequently stayed on indefinitely. Rubina was then a girl of fourteen, and held the enviable position of belle of Anacapri. The sculptor, whose name was Carl Deutsch, somehow made the acquaintance of the beauty, and after a time persuaded her to sit to him. He first made a bust in wax, and then began to work it out in marble, using for his material an antique block found in one of the ruined palaces of Tiberius. Days and weeks he toiled over this bust, and as he worked he grew hopelessly in love with his model. As time passed, the islanders, with their usual freedom with foreigners’ names, translated Carl Deutsch into its Italian equivalent, Carlo Tedesco, and Rubina, who was constantly employed by the sculptor as a model, was naturally called Tedesco’s Rubina.

Then on the peaceful island was enacted the same old tragedy that has been played all over the world myriads of times before and since. Tedesco’s friend, the architect, also fell in love with the model, and took advantage of the sculptor’s preoccupation with his work to gain the girl’s affection. Early in the morning, while his friend was engaged in preparing his clay and arranging his studio for the day, he would toil up the six hundred stone steps which led to the village of Anacapri, on the plateau above, meet Rubina, and accompany her down as far as the outskirts of the town. Then often, at the close of the day, when the sculptor, oppressed with the hopeless feeling of discouragement and despair which at times comes over every true artist, would give up his favorite stroll with Rubina and remain to gaze at his work and ponder over it, the architect would be sure to take his place. So it went on to the usual climax. Rubina, flattered by the assiduous attentions of the one, and somewhat piqued by the frequent fits of absent-mindedness and preoccupation of the other, at last reluctantly gave her consent to marry the architect, who planned an elopement without exciting a suspicion on the part of the sculptor that his idol was stolen from him. The faithless friend, pretending to the innocent girl that, being of different religions, it was necessary for them to go to the mainland to be married, sailed away with her one morning at daybreak without the knowledge of any one save the two men who were hired to row them to Naples. Where they went, and how long they lived together, I could not find out, for she would not open her lips about that portion of her history. Only after a great deal of persuasive interrogation did I learn that when she came back she brought with her a girl baby a few months old. It was always believed in the village that her husband had died. I drew my own inference about the circumstances of her return.

When she reached the island, Tedesco had long since disappeared, and, although there were no absolute proofs, he was thought to be dead. For months after he had learned of the faithlessness of both sweetheart and friend he had been seen very little outside his studio. What he did there was not known, for he invited nobody to enter. Even the neighbor’s wife who had done the housekeeping for the two young men did not see the interior of the studio after Rubina ran away. She gossiped of the sculptor to the women down the street, and they all shook their heads, touched their foreheads significantly with index-fingers, and sadly repeated, “Un po’ matto, un po’ matto”—“A little mad.” Several weeks passed after the flight of the young couple, and then the sculptor was observed nearly every morning to walk over one of the hills in the direction of a high cliff. Sometimes he was absent but a few hours, but on other days he did not return until night. At length, towards the end of winter, he gave up his studio and apartment without a word of his plans to any one. When he had departed, carrying the few articles of clothing which were kept in the outer room, the housekeeper entered the studio and found, to her astonishment, that, with the sculptor, all traces of his work had disappeared.

After a while it was discovered that he had taken up his abode in a certain cave near the water’s edge, at the foot of the cliff, along the top of which he had been frequently seen walking. This cave had always been considered approachable only from the water side; but some men who were fishing for cuttlefish near the shore had seen the mad sculptor clamber down the precipice and enter the mouth of the cave, which was half closed by accumulated rubble and sand. The fishermen, of course, exaggerated their story, and the simple islanders, who always regard a demented person with awe, came to believe that the sculptor possessed superhuman strength and agility; and, although their curiosity concerning his mode of life and occupation was much excited, their superstitious fears prevented them from interfering with him or attempting to investigate his actions. At long intervals the hermit would appear in the piazza, receive his letters, buy a few articles of food, and disappear again, not to be seen for weeks.

Summer passed and a second winter came on, and with it a succession of unusually severe storms. During one of these long gales the sea rose several feet, and the breakers beat against the rocks with terrific force. On the weather side of the island all the boats which had not been hauled up much higher than usual were dashed to pieces. No one dared to leave the island, and there was no communication with the mainland for nearly two weeks. After that storm the sculptor was never seen again. Some fishermen ventured into the mouth of the cave, now washed clear of rubbish, but discovered nothing. It was therefore believed that the hermit, with all his belongings, was swept out to sea by the waves. Of late years no one had visited the cave, because the military guard stationed near by to prevent the people from gathering salt on the rocks, and thus evading the payment of the national tax on this article, had prohibited boats from landing there. This prohibition was strengthened by the orders which forbade the exploration of any of the Roman ruins or grottos on the island by persons not employed for that purpose by the government. Several years before, the authorities had examined all the ruins. They had carried to Naples all the antiquities they could find, and then had put a penalty on the explorations of the islanders, to whom the antiquities are popularly supposed to belong by right of inheritance. This regulation had created a great deal of bad feeling, particularly since several peasants had been fined and imprisoned for simply digging up a few relics to sell to travellers.

I asked the old woman what became of her child, for she did not readily volunteer any information concerning her.

“Ah, signor padrone,” she said, “she was a perfect little German, with hair as blond as the fleece of the yellow goats. She was a good child, but was never very strong. She married a coral fisherman when she was seventeen, and died giving birth to Lisa’s mother. Poor thing! May the blessed Maria, mother of God, rest her soul! Lisa’s mother was blond also, but with hair like the flame of sunset. She was a fine, strong creature, and could carry a sack of salt up the steps to Anacapri as well as any girl in the village—yes, even better than any other. She married a custom-house officer and moved to Naples, where she had meat on her table once every blessed week. But even in her prosperity the misfortunes of the family followed her, and the cholera carried off her husband, herself, and a boy baby—may their souls rest in Paradise!—leaving Lisa alone in the world but for me, who have lived to see all this misery and all these changes. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Lisa resembles her mother only in her eyes. All the rest of her is Caprian. Ah me! ah me! She’s the image of what I was, except her eyes. By the grace of God I am able to see it! May the Virgin spare her to suffer—” and so on to the end of the chapter of mingled family history and invocations.

Lisa resemble her? I thought. Impossible. What! that wrinkled skin ever know the bloom of youth like that on Lisa’s cheek; that sharp chin ever have a rounded contour; that angular face ever show as perfect an oval as the one fringed by the wavy hair straggling out from Lisa’s kerchief? Did that mask, seared with the marks of years of suffering, privation, and toil, ever bear the sweet, bewitching expression which in Lisa’s face haunts me with a vague, half-remembered fascination? Never! It cannot be!

This history of a love-tragedy, enacted when Goethe was still walking among the artificial antiquities in the groves of Weimar had a curious charm for me. I patiently listened to hours of irrelevant gossip and uninteresting description of family matters before I succeeded in getting together even as meagre a thread of the story as the one I have just repeated. The old woman had a feeble memory for recent events and dates, but she seemed to be able to recollect as well as ever incidents which took place at the beginning of the century. She retailed the scandals of fifty years ago with as much delight as if the interested parties had not all of them long since been followed to the hillside graveyard or been buried in the waste of waters in that mysterious region known as the coral fisheries.

Partly in order to test the accuracy of her memory, and partly to satisfy my curiosity, I persuaded her to show me the place where the sculptor used to walk along the edge of the cliff. I had previously taken a look at the cave from the water, and knew its position in relation to the cliff, but had never been able to discover how the German had succeeded in clambering up and down. Accordingly, one Sunday afternoon, when most of the islanders were in church, she hobbled along with me a short distance up the hillside and pointed out the spot where the children had seen the mad sculptor vanish in the air. This place was marked by a projecting piece of rock, which cropped out of the turf on the very edge of the cliff, not at its highest point, but at some distance down the shoulder of the hill, where it had been broken sheer off in the great convulsion of nature which raised the isolated, lofty island above the sea. I could not induce her to go within a dozen rods or more of the edge of the cliff, and, having shown me the spot I wished to find, she hobbled homeward again.

There was no path across the hill in any direction, and the scant grass was rarely trodden except by the goats and their keepers. On that Sunday forenoon there was no one in sight except, a long distance off, a shepherd watching a few goats. Thinking it a favorable opportunity to investigate the truth of the story about the sculptor, I walked up to the very brink of the precipice and lay down flat on the top of the piece of rock pointed out by the old woman, and cautiously looked over the abyss. The cliff below me was by no means sheer, for it was broken by a number of irregular shelf-like projections, a few inches wide, upon which loose bits of falling stone had caught from time to time. Cautiously looking over the cliff, I saw at once that it would be possible for me to let myself down to the first irregular projection, or bench, provided I could get some firm hold for my hands. The turf afforded no such hold, and at the very edge, where it was crumbled by the weather, it was so broken as to be dangerous to stand on. I looked along the smooth, perpendicular ledge, but found no ring to fasten a rope to and no marks of any such contrivance. A careful search in the immediate neighborhood disclosed no signs of a wooden post or stake, or, indeed, anything which would serve as an anchor for a hand rope. I lay down and hung over the cliff, to see if I could discover any traces of a ladder, marks of spikes, tell-tale streaks of iron-rust, or anything to show how the descent had been made. Nothing of the kind was visible.

Far below, the great expanse of turquoise sea, stained with the shadows of summer clouds, seemed to rise with a convex surface to meet the sky at the distant horizon line. Away off to the south, towards Stromboli and Sicily, a few sails, minute white dots relieved against the delicate blue water, hung motionless, as if suspended in an opalescent ether. To the left the green shores of the mainland stretched away to hazy Pæstum. To the right the headland of Anacapri rose majestically against the tender summer sky, and a bank of cumulus clouds was reflected in the smooth sea. Beneath screamed a flock of sea-gulls, sailing hither and thither in graceful flight.

While dreaming over the beauty of the scene before me, I suddenly caught sight out of the very corner of my eye, as it were, of a crevice in the ledge beside me, almost hidden by the grass which grew tall against the rock. Hastily tearing the grass away with my right hand, I found that this cleft, which was only a couple of inches wide at the most, continued downward along the face of the cliff in a slanting direction, rapidly diminishing in width until it lost itself or became a simple crack in the rock. With my knife and fingers I dug the cleft out clean, as far in as I could reach, expecting to find an iron rod or a spike or something to which a rope could be fastened. But I was again disappointed, for there were no signs of iron and no visible marks of man’s handiwork. Whether this was an artificial excavation in the rock, or merely an accidental irregularity, I could not determine, but it made a perfect hold for the hand, like an inverted draw-pull. The moment I discovered this I saw how the descent could easily be accomplished, and without stopping to reflect I clutched my right hand firmly in the cleft and swung off the cliff. My feet struck a pile of loose stones, but I soon kicked them off, made a solid foothold for myself, and then cautiously turned around. The wall of rock pitched backward sufficiently for me to lean up against it, with my face to the sea, and stand there perfectly secure. When I turned again and stood facing the rock, my head was above the edge of the cliff so that I could overlook quite an area of the hilltop. Before attempting to descend the cliff I thought it prudent to test my ability to reach the turf again. Seizing the cleft with the fingers of my right hand, and clutching the irregularities of the edge of the rock with my left, I easily swung myself upon my chest, and then upon my knees, and stood on the turf. Elated now by my success, I let myself over the edge again, and began the difficult task of picking my way down the face of the cliff. By diligently kicking and pushing the rubble from the bench I was on, I slowly made my way along, steadying myself as well as I could by putting my fingers in the crevices of the rock. In two places I found three or four holes, which had the appearance of having been artificially made, and by the aid of these I let myself down to the second and third projecting benches. From this point the descent was made without much difficulty, although I carefully refrained from casting my eyes seaward during the whole climb. Fortunately I was on the face of the cliff, which was at a receding angle, and consequently was not swept by the telescope of the guard on the beach to the right, and I finished the descent and reached a point to the left of the mouth of the cave, and on a level with it, without any interruption. I was too much fatigued to care to risk discovery by the guard in entering the cave, which was in full sight of his station; so, after resting awhile on the rocks, I clambered up the path I had come, and found that the ascent, though toilsome, was not particularly difficult.

I told no one of my adventure, not even the old woman; but early the next Sunday morning I went down the cliff again, unobserved as before, and, watching my chance when the guard was sweeping the shore to the right with his glass, I stole into the cave. It was an irregular hole, perhaps thirty feet deep at its greatest length, and not over ten feet high in any part. Three shallow, alcove-like chambers led off the main room. These were all three nearly full of gravel, sand, and disintegrated rock, and the floor of the whole cavern was covered with this same accumulation. There were plentiful marks of the labors of the Italian antiquarians, for the ground had all been dug up, and the last shallow pits which had been excavated to the bed-rock had not been refilled.

With no settled purpose I took up a piece of an old spade I found there, and began to dig on one side of the cave near the largest alcove. The accumulation was not packed hard, and I easily threw it aside. I had removed a few feet of earth without finding anything to reward my labors, and then began to dig in the heap of rubbish which was piled in the alcove, nearly touching its low ceiling. Almost the first shovelful of earth I threw out had a number of small gray tesseræ in it. Gathering these up and taking them to the light, I found that part of them were of marble, or other light-colored stone; but that a few were of glass with a corroded surface, which could be clipped off with great ease, disclosing beautiful iridescent cubes underneath. The whole day was passed in this work, for I was much interested in my discovery. The tesseræ were of no great value, to be sure, but they proved that the cave had been used by the Romans, probably as a grotto of the nymphs, and they were certainly worth keeping in a private collection. Possibly not a little of the charm of the operation of excavating was due to the element of danger in it. The guard was stationed less than a rifle-shot away, and if I had been discovered, fine and possibly imprisonment would have been my lot.

To make a long story short, I made several excursions to the cave in the same manner, and dug nearly the whole ground in a systematic way, leaving until the last a small alcove near the mouth of the cave, because I found very few tesseræ anywhere in the strong daylight. Everything which was not a simple, uninteresting piece of stone or shell I stowed away in a bag and carried to my studio. In a few Sundays I had a peck or more of tesseræ, a quarter of them glass ones, and a great many bits of twisted glass rod and small pieces of glass vessels. One day the spade turned out, among other things, several small pieces of brown, porous substance which looked in the dim light like decayed wood. I put them in the bag with the rest, to be examined at my leisure at home. The next morning, when I came to turn out the collection gathered the day before, these curious pieces fell out with the rest, and immediately attracted my attention. In the strong light of day, I saw at once what they were. They were the decayed phalanges of a human hand. The story of Tedesco and Rubina was always in my mind; and I compared the bones with my own fingers, and found them to be without doubt the bones of an adult, and probably of a man.

I could scarcely wait for the next Sunday to arrive, but I did not dare to risk the descent of the cliff on a week-day lest I should be seen by the fishermen. When at last I did reach the cave again, I went at my work with vigor, continuing my search in the place where I left off the previous week. In a short time I unearthed several more bones similar to those I already had, but, although I thoroughly examined every cubic foot of earth which I had not previously dug over, I found no more of the skeleton.

In my studio that evening I arranged the little bones as well as I could in the positions they had occupied in the human hand. As far as I could make out, I had the thumb, the first and third fingers and one joint of the second, three of the bones of the hand, and one of the wrist-bones. There could be no question but these had once belonged to a human hand, and to the right hand, too. There was no means of knowing how long ago the person had died, neither could there be any possible way of identifying these human relics. The possession of the grewsome little objects seemed to set my imagination on fire. After going to bed at night I often worked myself into a state of disagreeable nervous tension by meditating on the history of the sculptor, and revolving in my mind the theories I had formed of the mystery of his life and the manner of his death. For some reason the old woman had never told me where his studio had been, and it never occurred to me to ask her until the thought suddenly came during one of these night-hours of wakefulness. When I put the question to her the next afternoon, she replied, simply:

“This studio was his, signor padrone.”

The poor old soul had been living her life over again, day after day, as she sat knitting and looking out to sea, her imagination quickened and her memory refreshed by the surroundings which in many decades had scarcely changed at all.

This information gave a new stimulus to my thoughts, and I lay awake and pondered and surmised more than ever. There seemed to be something hidden away in my own consciousness, which was endeavoring to work its way into recognition. It would almost come in range of my mental vision, and then would lose itself again, just as some well-known name will coquettishly elude the grasp of the memory. While lying awake in a real agony of thought, a vague feeling would enter my mind for an instant, that I had only to interpret what I already knew, and the mystery of my imagination would be clear to me. Then I would revolve and revolve again all the details of the story, but the fugitive idea always escaped me. With that discouraging persistence which is utterly beyond our control, whenever great anxiety weighs upon our minds, I would repeat, again and again, the same series of arguments and the same line of theories until at last, utterly worn out, I would go to sleep. It was quite inexplicable that I should think so much about a sculptor of whom I had never heard, except from Tedesco’s Rubina, and who died long before I was born; but, in spite of my reason, I could not rid myself of the vague consciousness that there was something I was unwittingly hiding from myself.

One warm night in summer I sat up quite late writing letters, and then, thinking I should go to sleep at once on account of my fatigue, went to bed. But sleep came only after some hours, and even then not until I had stood for a long time looking out of the window on the moonlit houses below, with my bare feet on the cold stone floor. The first thought that came to my head, as I awoke the next morning, was about that marble head I had seen in Rome a year before. The dark page of my mind became illuminated in an instant. I did not need to summon Lisa to note the resemblance of her face to the marble one which had so fascinated me, for I was familiar enough with her features to require no aid to my memory. Besides, I had a fairly accurate study of her head on my easel, and I compared the face on the canvas with the marble one which I now remembered so vividly. There was the identical contour of the cheeks and forehead, with the hyper-delicate chin; the nose, the mouth, the eyes, each repeated the forms of the marble bust. It was the color alone that gave the painting its modern aspect, and it had been, I now saw, my preoccupation with the color which had prevented my observing the resemblance before. The only thing my portrait lacked, as a representation of the model from whom the marble was made, was that fascinating expression of girlhood, which, I was obliged to confess to myself, I had not succeeded in catching.

Full of my discovery, I wrote at once to the authorities in Rome, asking for a history of the fragment.

In a few days I received the not unexpected information that it had been given by the Naples Museum in exchange for another piece of antique sculpture. I hurried across to Naples and interviewed the authorities there, requesting precise statements about the bust, on the plea that I was interested in the particular period of art which it represented. In the list of objects of antiquity excavated in the summer of 18—, I found this entry, under the head of Capri:

“Female head with ivy wreath in hair—Marble—Broken off at neck—No other fragments discovered. Mem.: This probably belonged to a statue of a sea-nymph, as it was found in a grotto with the remains of mosaic pavement and ceiling.”

In return for this information I gave the authorities my sincere thanks, but not my secret.

Three years later I met my two artist friends in New York. Like all who have torn themselves away from the enchanting influences of Italy, we reviewed with delight every incident of our sojourn there, not forgetting the visit to the museum in Rome. Two plaster copies of the head had been made, and the mould then broken.

In each of the studios the plaster head occupied the place of honor, and its owner exhausted the choicest terms of art phraseology in its praise. Foolish fellows, they could not escape from the potent spell of its bewitching expression, and, burdened with the weight of the sentimental secret, each of them took occasion, privately and with great hesitation and shamefacedness, to confess to me that he had stolen away, while we were together in the museum in Rome, to kiss the marble lips of the fascinating fragment.

To each of them I made the same remark:

“My dear fellow, if you were so foolish as to fall in love with a marble head, and a fragment at that, what would you have done in my place? I was intimately acquainted with the model who sat for it!”

MEDUSA’S HEAD

HENRY SEYMOUR fancied he was a realist. Indeed, he was very much annoyed when his work was described by an art critic as idealistic, or when he was alluded to in the art columns as “a rising young artist quite out of place in the realistic circle to which he affects to belong.” But the bias of mind which prevented him from recognizing the real qualities in his own productions, equally hindered him from accomplishing what was his present highest ambition—an accurate and realistic imitation of nature. In common with the large majority of the young artists of the day, he studied two or three years in Europe, notably in Paris, where he learned to believe, or fancied he believed, that the most hopeful tendency of modern art consisted in the elimination of all idea and all sentiment from the motive of a picture, and the glorification of the naturalistic and, if I may say so, earthly qualities of the model.

After his return from the ateliers of Paris, Seymour divided his time between the apotheosis of rags and squalor and the delineation of the features of the New York banker, broker, or insurance president, with an occasional excursion into the field of female portraiture, which was opened to him through the large and influential circle of friends and acquaintances of his family. His efforts in this direction frequently resulted in popular and artistic success, and after a season or two gained for him a profitable and exceedingly agreeable line of sitters. A strange jumble of millionaires, bootblacks, society ladies, and beggar-women covered the canvases that encumbered his studio. The portraits went away in their turn, but the pictures, after brief absences at exhibitions, remained his own property, testifying to the practical worthlessness of the encouragement of his comrades, who would sniff at his portraits of ladies and gentlemen, and prostrate themselves before his studies of gutter-snipe. It must be understood that no one of his artistic clique disapproved of his painting society portraits, for they had all adopted some means of gaining a livelihood outside of the special line of art which they, in their mistaken zeal, believed to be the only true and worthy one. Most of his comrades taught in the art schools of the city; some of the more fortunate ones conducted highly profitable private classes, where, at an enormously extravagant price per season, they actively stimulated and encouraged the artistic illusions of wealthy young ladies, and helped them to acquire a superficial and dangerous facility, which, for a future mistress of a house, is the most useless accomplishment imaginable.

Seymour was of an energetic and enterprising turn of mind, and if it had not been for his unwavering devotion to his artistic creed, he would have speedily made a wide reputation for himself as a painter with an original and charming talent. But accident of situation had exposed him to the contagion of realism, and the fever which seized him in Paris was now kept alive, in a milder form to be sure, by association with the young painters in New York, who had been abroad the same time as himself. After two seasons at home he found his studio too small and inconvenient, and he turned a stable in the spacious back yard of his father’s house, on one of the cross streets near Fifth Avenue, into a fine studio, with a side and top light, and transported thither his easels, his bric-à-brac, and the lares and penates of his Bohemian quarters. The new studio was entered by a porte-cochère at one side of the house, and was therefore as isolated and private as if it stood in the centre of an acre of ground.

Among the sitters who came to him in his new studio was Miss Margaret Van Hoorn, the only daughter of a well-known wealthy man, who had a stalwart pride in his Knickerbocker origin, and boasted generations of opulent Van Hoorns before him. Miss Van Hoorn was not an ordinary society belle, but an intelligent, capable, sensible girl, and a favorite no less for the charm of her personal character than for a distinguished type of face and figure, which would stimulate the ambition of the most worn and weary portrait-painter.

Here, then, was Seymour’s golden opportunity. He recognized it, and began to make the most of it by starting to paint a portrait of the young lady in a party dress. It had hitherto been his custom to deny to his sitters the privilege of watching his work in its various stages, but he was unable to refuse Miss Van Hoorn’s request that she might be permitted to see the portrait in progress. Her desire to watch his work was excusable, because she had already taken lessons in painting, and had some little knowledge of technique. After the first sitting was over she occupied the divan under the large window, and chatted cheerfully an hour or more, thus initiating an intimacy which grew rapidly as the sittings went on. The painter, as long as he had his palette on his thumb, looked upon his sitter as a sort of automaton, watched the pure lines of her neck and arms with no conscious feeling except that of keen anxiety to reproduce their grace, and studied the mobile turn of the lips and the varying curve of the eyelids with a single-minded desire to catch something of their charm and fix it on the canvas.

But soon another element crept insensibly into the relation between sitter and painter, and long before it was recognized by either of them, became a potent factor in the growing problem. Miss Van Hoorn first began to question Seymour about his artistic creed, then showed an interest in his early life, thus encouraging the artist to talk about himself. She grew bold in criticising his work, and even modestly declared her disapproval of the confusion of his studio, and occasionally gave to the arrangement of the objects a few of those skilful feminine touches which add an indefinable charm to any interior. The artist, in his turn, suggested books for her to read, frequently joined her in the box at the Metropolitan Opera-house, accompanied her to picture exhibitions, and even advised her as to the color and style of dress most suited to her complexion and figure. They were all the while under the protection of that unwritten social law which grants a certain brief license to sitter and painter, which, like the freedom of a picnic or an excursion party, usually lasts no longer than the conditions which make this freedom innocent and desirable.

“Mr. Seymour,” said the sitter one day, “why don’t you paint an ideal subject, something classical or poetical?”

“I’m a realist, Miss Van Hoorn, and I have come to the conclusion, since I began your portrait, that I had better stick to copper pots and cabbages.”

“But no one cares for copper pots and cabbages, even if the former do have the sheen of burnished gold, and the latter sparkle with dew-drop jewels. I think every painter ought to paint something more than the surface of things.”

“How about Vollon and—”

“You know,” she interrupted, “I am not far enough along, as you call it, to appreciate the wild combinations of color and the hodge-podge of splashes and dashes affected by the modern school. I have tried to acquire this taste under your tuition, but I cannot do it. I shall always believe in the verdict of past centuries, that good art has its reason in the immortalization of the beautiful.”

“But there’s Terburg—” he began.

“Raphael,” she interrupted.

“Van der Meer de Delft,” he suggested.

“Botticelli,” she argued, and so the conversation went on, and at last ended, as discussions on religion, politics, and art always do, in each declaring unwavering adherence to original views.

Excursions to the art galleries and to the Metropolitan Museum were often the result of these little flutters; but although neither the artist nor the sitter would confess to the least disturbance of artistic faith, Seymour actually began, before he knew why, to select an ideal subject. Several motives from classical poetry, from mythology, and from modern writers came to his mind, and he was unable to decide, nor did he know that he really cared to fix on any one of them. Meanwhile the sittings continued, and the portrait approached completion. Suddenly one day a compromise suggested itself to the painter, how or why he never knew, and he quietly remarked, “Miss Van Hoorn, I am going to paint a Medusa’s head.”

“Horrid,” she said, frankly. “I hate snakes.”

Seymour was somewhat discouraged by her impulsive disapproval of his subject, but, nevertheless, warmly defended his choice, and was all the more eloquent, perhaps, because he felt that she had recognized his ingenious compromise between idealism and realism. He insisted that the proportions of her face had suggested the subject to him, and was so serious in his assertion that she was in this degree responsible for his choice of motive, that she finally yielded to his eager solicitation, and consented to sit for the eyes and mouth of the Medusa’s head.

The same afternoon he went down-town to a shop near the docks, where all kinds of birds, animals, and reptiles were sold alive—a sort of depot, in fact, for the dime museums and small menageries—and bought a box of a dozen moccasin snakes recently arrived from the South. He selected this variety on account of the venomous appearance of the small heads, the repulsive thickness of the bodies, and the richness of color of the mottled scales, intending to make a close study of all the characteristics of this variety of the serpent. He could in this way heighten the contrast which he proposed to make between the calm beauty of the woman’s face and the repulsiveness of the serpent locks. He ordered the box to be sent to his studio the same afternoon, and spent that evening in blocking out on the canvas a charcoal sketch of the head he had in his mind.

The following day was Sunday, and during the night a severe cold wave, accompanied by a blizzard of unusual severity, began to sweep over the city. Early on Monday morning the artist went around into the studio, and was surprised to find that the snow had blown in through the ventilator, and that the temperature was very low, notwithstanding the fact that a fire had been kept up all the time in the great magazine stove. His first thought was for the snakes, and, by no means certain that they were not already frozen, he moved the box near the fire, closed the ventilators in the roof of the studio, opened the dampers in the stove, and shook the grate, so as to start the fire more briskly.

It was the last day Miss Van Hoorn could come, because she was about to accompany her family to Florida for a few weeks, and in order to sit a little for the picture she had promised to come earlier than usual.

Seymour, like all who were not obliged to brave the blizzard on that now memorable Monday, had no idea of the severity of the storm which was raging, and was not surprised, therefore, at the appearance of his sitter shortly after nine o’clock. She was accompanied, as usual, by her maid and by her pug-dog. Miss Van Hoorn never looked more charming than she did at that moment, for her cheeks were ruddy with the cold, and her eyes sparkled with the excitement of the drive.

“Do you know,” she said, “we came very near not getting here. The drifts were so high that John was scarcely able to get the horses through the street; and as for the cold, I never felt anything like it. There now, I do believe I have left my opera cloak at home, and you must finish the drapery to-day. You’ll have to run back and bring it,” she added, turning to her maid. “I don’t think the storm is as bad as it was; the wind does not sound so loud, at any rate.”

The maid courageously set out on her walk, but before she crossed the avenue was blown down, half smothered with the snow and half frozen, and was finally rescued by a policeman, who carried her into the basement of the nearest house, where she was obliged to remain the larger part of the day.

Meanwhile the artist and his sitter sat for a long time beside the fire, expecting the return of the maid at every moment. Almost the first thing Miss Van Hoorn noticed was the box of snakes, and, although she was horrified and disgusted at the first sight of them, soon began to look at them with interest, because the artist was so enthusiastic about the use he proposed to make of them, and so full of the picture he had begun. The glass in front of the box was slightly clouded by vapor condensed by the change in temperature, and in order to examine more closely the beautiful colors of the scales, Seymour took out the glass, placed it on top of the box, and went to get a paint-rag to wipe off the vapor. The moccasins made no sign of life.

Miss Van Hoorn was very much interested in the charcoal sketch of the head, criticised it frankly and freely, and they both grew quite absorbed in the changes the artist rapidly made in the proportions of the face. The loud striking of the antique clock soon reminded them, however, that the hour for the sitting was long past, and that the portrait was of more present importance than the embryonic picture.

The artist was shortly busy with his painting, and the sitter, now well accustomed to the pose, endeavored to facilitate the progress of the work by remaining as quiet as possible. The silence of the studio was broken only by the stertorous breathing of the pug, asleep on the Turkish carpet in front of the stove, and by the rattle of the sleet against the large window.

Suddenly the shrill yelps of the dog startled them from their preoccupation. On the carpet, near the stove, one of the moccasins was coiled, ready to strike the pug, who, in an agony of terror, could not move a foot, but only uttered wild and piercing shrieks.

“Never mind; I’ll soon settle him,” said Seymour; and he rushed at the snake with his maul-stick. But before he could cross the room, the moccasin had struck his victim; and as the artist shattered his slender stick at the first blow, he saw that the box was empty, and that the other snakes were wriggling around the studio.

Miss Van Hoorn was transfixed with horror, but she neither shrieked nor fainted, although she looked as if she would swoon before Seymour could reach her. The pair were fairly surrounded by the reptiles before the artist had time to think of another weapon.

The only thing to do in the emergency occurred to both of them at the same instant, and in a much shorter time than it takes to tell it Miss Van Hoorn was safely perched on the solid crossbar of the French easel, four feet or more from the ground; and the painter, who had hastily thrown the portrait on the floor, face upward, was standing on the shelf.

Knowing the venomous character of the moccasin, Seymour was not eager for a fight with the snakes, particularly since he was without a weapon. It was impossible to reach the trophy of Turkish yataghans on the farther wall of the studio without encountering at least two of the reptiles, and after a moment’s consideration he climbed up and sat down beside Miss Van Hoorn, tête-à-tête fashion, and, like herself, put his arm around the upright piece between them.

Neither one of them spoke for a moment; and then he, overcome with remorse at his carelessness, and trembling at the possible result of the adventure, exclaimed, in a tone of despair, “Here’s a situation!”

This commonplace remark did not carry with it a hint of a satisfactory solution of the difficulty, and he felt this the moment he had uttered it. Miss Van Hoorn made no reply, but with pale cheeks and frightened eyes sat silent, clinging almost convulsively to her support.

“We can easily bring the people by shouting,” suggested her companion.

“No, no!” she half gasped. “What a ridiculous position to be found in! Indeed, I—I—Are you sure the neighbors cannot see through the window?”

“Of course they can’t; it’s corrugated glass. But then, after all, if any one should come, the moccasins might bite them, and we should be no better off.”

The snakes became more and more active.