The Roman season was nearly over: travelers were making preparations to fly out of one gate as the Malaria should enter by the other; for, according to popular report, this fearful disease enters, the last day of April, at midnight, and is in full possession of the city on the first day of May. Rocjean, not having any fears of it, was preparing not only to meet it, but to go out and spend the summer with it; it costs something, however, to keep company with La Malaria, and our artist had but little money: he must sell some paintings. Now it was unfortunate for him that though a good painter, he was a bad salesman; he never kept a list of all the arrivals of his wealthy countrymen or other strangers who bought paintings; he never ran after them, laid them under obligations with drinks, dinners, and drives; for he had neither the inclination nor that capital which is so important for a picture-merchant to possess in order to drive--a heavy trade, and achieve success--such as it is. Rocjean had friends, and warm ones; so that whenever they judged his finances were in an embarrassed state, they voluntarily sent wealthy sensible as well as wealthy insensible patrons of art to his aid, the latter going as Dutch galliots laden with doubloons might go to the relief of a poor, graceful felucca, thrown on her beam-ends by a squall. One morning there glowed in Rocjean's studio the portly forms of Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Shodd, together with the tall, fragile figure of Miss Tillie Shodd, daughter and heiress apparent and transparent. Rocjean welcomed them as he would have manna in the desert, for he judged by the air and manner of the head of the family, that he was on picture-buying bent. He even gayly smiled when Miss Shodd, pointing out to her father, with her parasol, some beauty in a painting on the easel, run its point along the canvas, causing a green streak from the top of a stone pine to extend from the tree same miles into the distant mountains of the Abruzzi-the paint was not dry! She made several hysterical shouts of horror after committing this little act, and then seating herself in an arm-chair, proceeded to take a mental inventory of the articles of furniture in the studio. Mr. Shodd explained to Rocjean that he was a plain man: This was apparent at sight. That he was an uneducated man: This asserted itself to the eyes and ears. After which self-denial, he commenced 'pumping' the artist on various subjects, assuming an ignorance of things which, to a casual observer, made him appear like a fool; to a thoughtful person, a knave: the whole done in order, perhaps, to learn about some trifle which a plain, straightforward question would have elicited at once. Rocjean saw his man, and led him a fearful gallop in order to thoroughly examine his action and style.