"When after a little while I turned away from the statue, I saw a few paces distant from it, leaning against the window-frame, a youth, evidently the original of the figure; the same height, at that moment even in the same attitude, with the same luxuriant curly hair, the same brow and mouth, and especially the same eyes--magnificent deep black velvet eyes, which were fastened with a curious expression of fixed melancholy on his own likeness. I saw at the first glance that the young man was an Italian, and in the first words he spoke I recognised a native of the Campagna. They were spoken in answer to the question whether the statue were his! It was not; he had only stood several times as a model for it. 'But you are an artist?' I asked again. 'I do not know,' he answered; 'I sometimes think so, and sometimes again I think not. I only know one thing for certain, that I am miserable, the most miserable of men.' He had murmured the last words to himself, as turning suddenly from me he was about to hasten away. I do not believe he meant me to hear them, but I had heard them and held him back by the arm. 'We are fellow-countrymen,' I said, 'fellow-countrymen should always stand by one another; doubly so in a strange land; trebly so when it is a case of bearing misfortune or giving help.' "He looked at me with his large eyes, which gradually filled with tears. 'No one can help me,' he said. 'Even confession is a help, and often the greatest, most effectual to a heavy-laden heart.' 'Are you a priest?' 'Did the wounded man ask that who lay bleeding on the ground, when the Samaritan bent charitably over him?' Two large tears ran down his beautiful face, on which, while I spoke, the colour had come and gone. I had won him over. He promised--as I could not wait then--to meet me that evening in an Italian wine-shop, which he pointed out to me. We could talk better in a wine-shop than in a smart hotel.