The wine finished, our two artists took up their line of march for the object that had outlived so many millions on millions of human beings, and at last reached it, discovering its abode afar off, by the crowd of fair-and unfair, or red-haired Saxons, who were thronging up a staircase of a house near the Ripetta, as if a steamboat were ringing her last bell and the plank were being drawn in. 'And pray, can you tell me, Mister Buller, if it's a positive fact that the man has been so long as they say, at work on the thing?' 'And ah! I haven't the slightest doubt of it, myself. I've been told that he has worked on it, to be sure, for full thirty years; and I may say I am delighted, that he has it done at last, and that it is to be packed up and sent away to St. Petersburg next week. And how do you like the Hotel Minerva? I think it's not a very dirty inn, but the waiters are very demanding, and the fleas--' 'I beg you won't speak of them, it makes my blood run cold. Have you seen the last copy of _Galignani_? The Americans, I am glad to see, have had trouble with us, and I hope they will be properly punished. Do you know the Duke of Bigghed is in town?' 'Really! and when did he come--and where is the Duchess? oh!--she's a very amiable lady--but here's the picture!' Ushered in, or preceded by this rattle-headed talk, Caper and Rocjean stood at last before Ivanhof's celebrated painting--finished at last! Thirty years' work, and the result? A very unsatisfactory stream of water, a crowd of Orientals, and our Saviour descending a hill. The general impression left on the mind after seeing it, was like that produced by a wax-work show. Nature was travestied; ease, grace, freedom, were wanting: evidently the thirty years might have been better spent collecting beetles or dried grasses. Around the walls of the studio hung sketches painted during visits the artist had made to the East. Here were studies of Eastern heads, costumes, trees, soil by river-side, sand in the desert, copied with scrupulous care and precise truth, yet, when they were all together in the great painting, the combined effect was a failure. The artist, they said, had, during this long period, received an annual pension of so many roubles from the Russian government, and had taken his time about it. At last it was completed; the painting that had outlasted a generation was to be sent to St. Petersburg to hibernate after a lifetime spent in sunny Italy. Well! after all, it was better worth the money paid for it than that paid for nine tenths of those kingly toys in the baby-house Green Chambers of Dresden. _Le Roi s'amuse!_