"Stop, stop! wait a moment, Antonio," cried Salvator, and, turning round the picture he was working at, he took a crayon, and, on the reverse side of it, drew, in a few bold touches, the curious old fellow who had been going on so absurdly in front of Antonio's picture. "By all the saints!" cried Antonio, jumping up from his chair, and laughing loud and clear in spite of his despair, "that is the very man--that is Signor Pasquale Capuzzi, of whom I am speaking, to the very life." "There, you see," said Salvator quietly, "I know the gentleman who is probably your bitter rival. But go on with your story." "Signor Pasquale Capuzzi," continued Antonio, "is as rich as Crœsus, but, as I think I was telling you, a terrible miser, as well as a perfect ass. His best quality is that he is devoted to the arts, particularly to music and painting. But there is so much idiotic absurdity mixed up with this, that, even in those directions, it is impossible to put up with him. He believes himself to be the greatest composer in the world, and a singer the like of whom is not to be found in the Papal Chapel. Therefore he looks askance at our old Frescobaldi, and when the Romans talk of the marvellous charm and spell which Ceccarelli's voice possesses, he thinks Ceccarelli knows as much about singing as an old slipper, and that he--Capuzzi--is the person to enchant the world. But as the Pope's principal singer bears the proud name of Edoardo Ceccarelli di Merania, our Capuzzi likes to be styled 'Signor Pasquale Capuzzi di Senegaglia,' for his mother bore him in that place, and, in fact, people say, in a fishing-boat, from sudden terror at the rising of a sea-calf, and there is, consequently, a great deal of the sea-calf in his nature. In early life he put an opera on the stage, and it was hissed off it in the completest manner possible; but that did not cure him of his craze for writing diabolical music. On the other hand, when he heard Francesco Cavalli's opera, 'Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo,' he said the Capellmeister had borrowed the most sublime ideas from his own immortal works; for saying which he had a narrow escape of cudgellings, or even of knife-thrusts. He is still possessed with the idea of singing arias, accompanying himself by torturing a wretched guitar, which has to groan and sigh in support of his mewing and caterwauling. His faithful Pylades is a broken-down, dwarfish Castrato, whom the Romans call Pitichinaccio; and guess who completes the trio. Well, none other than the Pyramid Doctor, who emits sounds like a melancholy jackass, and is under the impression that he sings a magnificent bass, as good as Martinelli's, of the Papal Chapel. Those three worthies meet together of evenings, and sit on the balcony, singing motetts of Carissimi's till all the dogs and cats in the neighbourhood yell and howl, and the human beings within earshot devote the hellish trio to all the thousand devils.