Antonio answered: "Let me lay aside all bashfulness, which might close my lips. Let me speak freely out exactly what is in my mind. Salvator, I have never revered a master so wholly from out the very depths of my being as I do you. It is the often superhuman grandeur of the ideas which I admire in your works. You see, and comprehend, and grasp the profoundest secrets of Nature. You read, and understand, the marvellous hieroglyphs of her rocks, her trees, her waterfalls; you hear her mighty voices; you interpret her language, and can transcribe what she says to you. Yes, transcription is what I would call your bold and vivid style of working. Man, with his doings, contents you not; you look at him only as being in the lap of Nature, and in so far as his inmost being is conditioned by her phenomena. Therefore, Salvator, it is in marvellous combinations of landscape with figure that you are so wondrous great. Historical painting places limits which hem your flight, to your disadvantage." "You tell me this, Antonio," said Salvator, "as the envious historical painters do, who throw landscape to me by way of a _bonne-bouche_, that I may occupy myself in chewing it, and abstain from tearing their flesh. Do I not know the human figure, and everything appertaining to it? However, all those silly slanders, echoed from others----" "Do not be indignant, dear master," answered Antonio. "I do not repeat things blindly after other folks, and least of all should I pay any attention to the opinions of our masters here in Rome just now. Who could help admiring the daring drawing, the marvellous expression, and particularly the lively action, of your figures! One sees that you do not work from the stiff, awkward model, or from the dead lay figure, but that you are, yourself, your own living model, and that you draw and paint the figure which you place on the canvas in front of a great mirror." "Heyday, Antonio!" cried Salvator, laughing. "I believe you must have been peeping into my studio without my knowledge, to know so well what goes on there."