him at the Riva del Carbon, for sixty soldi yearly, on the Grand Canal, and it was there that he followed an occupation which procured him all the necessaries and some of the luxuries of life. He made it his business to address the most abjectly flattering panegyrics to eminent persons, and even to sovereigns like Francis I. and the Emperor Charles V., and they rewarded him with presents of money or old wine. Or if some unlucky aspirant to office was in need of popularity or favour, Aretino quietly explained to him that a little article from his own pen could make or mar success; and there was nothing to be done but to pay, and to pay handsomely. Between the composition of one libel and the next, the amiable Tuscan lived riotously on his latest earnings with his two daughters Adria and Austria; in plain language he was a blackmailer, a voluptuary, a man of the highest taste, and of the lowest tastes. No one loved him, but he was generally feared, and was therefore much sought after. His house was [Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Annali._] always full, and it was said that it was impossible to go there without meeting a scholar, a soldier, and a monk. He himself said pleasantly that the steps of his house were as much worn by the feet of visitors as the pavement before the Capitol was by the cars of triumphing Roman generals. Nor was it only those that could pay blackmail who mounted the stairs. The man was full of contradictions; the poor crept up to his door and did not return empty-handed. Aretino was charitable. He could not bear to see a child crying for cold or hunger, nor to see men or women sleeping shelterless in the streets, and often he took in under his roof pilgrims and poor wandering gentlemen. On Easter day he never failed to feed eighteen little beggar children at his table. But when he was tired of his visitors, rich or poor, he took refuge with Titian at San Cassian, for Titian was the only human being whom he loved sincerely, and all the resources of his venomous wit and cruel pen were at the disposal of this one friend. As for Titian’s other friends, Aretino spared them, but the artist’s enemies he harassed without mercy. He was a physical coward, of course, as all such men are. He hated Jacopo Tintoretto for two reasons, first, because his growing reputation was beginning to be a source of anxiety to Titian, and secondly, because he was too poor to be blackmailed and too proud to show himself in Titian’s house with the threadbare clothes which his wife, good soul, made him wear for economy’s sake. Aretino accordingly abused him, and Tintoretto heard of it and determined to put an end to it in his own way.