"By all means. Here, I think--so; the light is very good at this hour, but a little later we shall have the sun. If your Eminence will look at me--a little more to the left--I think that will do. I will draw it in in charcoal and your Eminence can judge." "Precisely," returned the Cardinal. "You will paint the devil even blacker than he is." "The devil?" repeated Gouache, raising his eyebrows with a slight smile. "I was not aware--" "And yet you have been in Rome four years!" "I am very careful," returned Gouache. "I never by any chance hear any evil of those whom I am to paint." "You have very well-bred ears, Monsieur Gouache. I fear that if I had attended some of the meetings in your studio while Donna Tullia was having her portrait painted, I should have heard strange things. Have they all escaped you?" Gouache was silent for a moment. It did not surprise him to learn that the omniscient Cardinal was fully acquainted with the doings in his studio, but he looked curiously at the great man before he answered. The Cardinal's small gleaming eyes met his with the fearlessness of superiority. "I remember nothing but good of your Eminence," the painter replied at last, with a laugh; and applying himself to his work, he began to draw in the outline of the Cardinal's head. The words he had just heard, implying as they did a thorough knowledge of the minutest details of social life, would have terrified Madame Mayer, and would perhaps have driven Del Ferice out of the Papal States in fear of his life. Even the good-natured and foolish Valdarno might reasonably have been startled; but Anastase was made of different stuff. His grandfather had helped to storm the Bastille, his father had been among the men of 1848; there was revolutionary blood in his veins, and he distinguished between real and imaginary conspiracy with the unerring certainty of instinct, as the bloodhound knows the track of man from the slot of meaner game. He laughed at Donna Tullia, he distrusted Del Ferice, and to some extent he understood the Cardinal. And the statesman understood him, too, and was interested by him. "You may as well forget their chatter. It does me no harm, and it amuses them. It does not seem to surprise you that I should know all about it, however. You have good nerves, Monsieur Gouache." "Of course your Eminence can send me out of Rome to-morrow, if you please," answered Gouache, with perfect unconcern. "But the portrait will not be finished so soon." "No--that would be a pity. You shall stay. But the others--what would you advise me to do with them?" asked the Cardinal, his bright eyes twinkling with amusement. "If by the others your Eminence means my friends," replied Gouache, quietly, "I can assure you that none of them will ever cause you the slightest inconvenience." "I believe you are right--their ability to annoy me is considerably inferior to their inclination. Is it not so?"