Symptomatic of the moral atmosphere of the Court is an anecdote mentioned in Doblado’s Letters. The King, surrounded by members of his household, was gazing from a window of the palace, when Mallo, who happened to be then first favorite with the Queen, drove by, handling a fine team of horses. “I wonder,” said the King, “how the fellow can afford to keep better horses than I can?” “The scandal goes, Sir,” replied Godoy, “that he is himself kept by an ugly old woman whose name I have forgotten.” * * * * * On to the stage of this shabby comedy of court life, set with the scenery of a nation’s humiliation, Goya entered and made an immediate hit. A man of violent passions, without conscience or scruples, he played his part as if all the characteristics of his contemporaries were represented in himself. He has left a self-portrait, painted some seven years after his appearance on the scene. It now hangs in the Prado and might be mistaken for the portrait of a bull-fighter. Indeed, it reminds us that at one period of his young days Goya became efficient in the bull-ring. The neck is short and thick; the mouth fleshy and sensual; the nose broad; the cheeks large and heavily modeled; the cushioned brows indicate a hot, quick sensibility; there is a general suggestion of abounding animal force. Only the eyes, deep set and brilliant, proclaim the man’s mentality. It is the face of a peasant, which in his origin Goya had been. His father was a small farmer in the village of Fuentedetodos in Aragón, where Goya was born in 1746. Bred hardily and possessed of great physical strength, the boy asserted his independence early and, determining to be an artist, sought instruction from a painter in Zaragoza. Here he soon gained notoriety for his escapades and was distinguished among his fellow students for his daring and his skill in the use of rapier and dagger. Finally he was wounded in some broil and hidden away by his friends to escape the clutches of the Inquisition, whose attention had been called to the affair. Accordingly, after his recovery Goya found it convenient to leave Zaragoza. He made his way to Rome, where he stayed for several years, indulging his appetite for adventure and intrigue on a larger scale. He again fell foul of the Inquisition, through an attempt to remove a young lady from a convent and would have fared ill, but for the intervention of the Spanish ambassador, who promised to see that the offending artist returned to Spain. So in 1769 Goya arrived in Madrid. Shortly after his appearance in the capital Goya married the daughter of the painter, Francisco Bayeu. She must have been a lady of exceptional forbearance, since she remained true to him notwithstanding his frequent amours and presented him with twenty children.