What Antonio promised came to pass. The simple, healing medicines of Father Bonifazio, the careful nursing of Dame Caterina and her daughters, the mild season of the year which just then came on, had such a speedy effect on Salvator's strong constitution, that he soon felt well enough to begin thinking of his art, and, as a beginning, made some magnificent sketches for pictures which he intended to paint at a future time. Antonio scarcely left Salvator's room. He was all eye when the master was sketching, and his opinions on many matters showed him to be initiated in the mysteries of art himself. "Antonio," said Salvator, one day, "you know so much about art that I believe you have not only looked on at a great deal with correct understanding, but have even wielded the pencil yourself!" "Remember, dear master," answered Antonio, "that when you were recovering from unconsciousness, I told you there were many things lying heavy on my heart. Perhaps it is time, now, for me to divulge my secrets to you fully. Although I am the surgeon who opened a vein for you, I belong to Art with all my heart and soul. I intend now to devote myself to it altogether, and throw the hateful handicraft entirely to the winds." "Ho, ho, Antonio!" said Salvator, "bethink you what you are going to do. You are a clever surgeon, and perhaps will never be more than a bungler at painting. Young as you are in years, you are too old to begin with the crayon. A man's whole life is scarcely enough in which to attain to one single perception of the True, still less to the power of representing it poetically." "Ah, my dear master," said Antonio, smiling gently, "how should I entertain the mad idea of beginning now to turn myself to the difficult art of painting, had I not worked at it as hard as I could ever since I was a child, had not heaven so willed it that, though I was kept away from art, and everything in the shape of it, by my father's obstinacy and folly, I made the acquaintance, and enjoyed the society, of masters of renown. Even the great Annibale interested himself in the neglected boy, and I have the happiness to be able to say I am a pupil of Guido Reni." "Well, good Antonio," said Salvator, a little sharply, as his manner sometimes was. "If that is so, you have had great teachers; so, no doubt, in spite of your surgical skill, you may be a great pupil of theirs too. Only what I do not understand is, how you, as a pupil of the gentle and tender Guido (whom, perhaps, as pupils in their enthusiasm sometimes do--you even outdo in tenderness, in your work), how you can hold me to be a master in my art at all." Antonio coloured at those words of Salvator's; in fact, they had about them a ring of jeering irony.