That afternoon, the dreaded sitting began badly. The Senator missed my wife and her ministrations. He was writing his memoirs, and wanted to refresh his memory about his third tariff speech. His secretary was no good as a reader, he complained, but my wife had seemed to have some sense about her. He couldn’t understand why a woman of sense should want to go gallivanting. His manner implied that it was wholly my fault that my wife should prefer Bar Harbor realities to Little Rock recollections. Half-peevishly and half-humorously, he writhed about in his chair, like a bad little boy grown old. He did not like the cigar he had brought, and scorned the best I could offer. He drove me to despair by presenting square front view when I needed to verify dewlaps in profile; he brushed off imaginary flies from his Roman nose, just as if my studying his nose had made it itch. He attempted every grotesque perversity in the sitter’s calendar, and even invented some original bedevilments of his own. He turned his attention to my rendering of the details of his attire, telling me that he had always _tried_ to tie his tie as tight as he could get it, and that if I didn’t mind (indeed, I did mind!) he wanted to have that third button of his waistcoat fastened up, if the dam’ thing was to go down to posterity in imperishable bronze. Alas, my sitter was eluding me again. His reality as a human being was hidden from me in a fog of momentary misconduct. Suddenly the Senator straightened. He was looking toward the corner where a stricken Gigi was still hovering about our rejected collaborative masterpiece, and contemplating the wreck of Mario’s future. “Where on God’s footstool did you get that hand?” shouted the Senator, the big W-shaped vein on his left temple swelling in his excitement. “Gigi and I made it,” I replied, calmly accepting the fact that either the Senator or I had at last gone crazy under the strain of the Bullwinkle bust. The man had never before shown a spark of any interest whatsoever in my works, whether clay or plaster, bronze or marble. I wondered whether a strait-jacket would have been a good thing to include in my studio equipment, but I was not quite sure which one of us needed it the more, so bewildered was I by the change that had seized on the Senator. He bounded from his chair, snatching the ground, one might say, from under Gigi’s feet. “That hand,” bellowed Mr. Bullwinkle, shaking his forefinger at me as if I were his political opponent, “that hand is a fine thing! I tell you, it’s a great thing! It’s the best thing you’ve got in your whole shooting-gallery, and don’t you start in to deny it! I’d rather have that one piece of alabaster marble than the whole of Westminster Abbey!”