Vanitas

world. A great many months spent among buffaloes and wild boars, conversing only with those wild cherry-trees, of whom he used whimsically to say, "they are such good little fo

reshold of his studio, with the shaven face and cockaded hat of a tall footman over-topping them from behind.

th, well-bred but audacious and a trifle ferocious. And dropping on to a divan she added, nodding first at her companion and then at the pictures all

furs on that shabby divan of his, she appeared in the light of the modern Lucretia Borgia, the tamed panther of fashionable life. "What an interesting thing civilisation is!" he thought, watching he

ce of her companion. He knew that she was very young, very pretty, and very smart, and that he had made her his best bow, and offered her his least rickety chair; for the rest, he sat opposite to his Lucret

esign you a dress all black and white and wicked green-yo

swering contemptuously, when Cecchino's attention was suddenly called to the

ung lady who had been introduced as Madame Krasinska, keeping a portfolio open wi

Lena!" and Madame Fosca reverted to the cont

ena, did you say?" asked

personation of youthful brightness and elegance as she stood there in her long, silvery furs, holding the drawing with tiny, tight-gloved hands, a

silvery young voice of hers; "she's mad, isn't she? An

y can give people certain kinds of sensitiveness, of rapid intuition! No woman of another class wou

ked Cecchino, taking the sketch from Madame Krasinska's h

ing, reddish face, trudging through the streets or standing before shops, in her extraordinary costume of thirty years ago, her enormous crinoline, on which the silk skirt and ragged petticoat hung limply, her gigantic coal-scuttle bonnet, shawl, prunella boots, and great muff or parasol; one of several outfits, all alike, of that distant period, all alike inexpressibly dirty and tattered. In all weather

onger while than I care to count up. It seems to me as if she must always have been there, like the olive-trees and the paving stones; for after all, Giotto's tower was not there before Giotto, whereas poor old Sora Lena-But, by the way, there is a limit even to her. There is a legend about her; they say that she was once sane, and had two sons, who went as Volunteers in '59, and were killed at Solferino, and ever since then she has sa

r sketches, but she is too polite to ask you the price of it. That's what comes o

and looked more young, a

isite visitor. Poor, charming young creature, he thought; the only thing she thinks people one knows can sell, is themselves, and that's called getting married. "You must explain to your friend," said Cecchino to the Baroness Fosca, as he hunted in a drawer for a piece of clean paper,

muff; "it is very good of you to give me such a ... such a very interesting

erfume of exquisiteness; and he thought of the hideous old draggle-tailed mad woman,