"No, no, it can't be!" exclaimed my uncle, unable to keep his chair in his excitement, and nervously pacing the apartment. "You do not really think that Angelo would murder a fellow-mortal merely to produce a realistic picture?" "Why not?" replied the Baronet coolly, as if the supposititious act, were the most natural one in the world. "Such instances _have_ occurred in the history of art--science, too, has had its murders. Did not Vesalius on one occasion dissect a living man? From his boyhood Angelo has thirsted for fame as an artist. His long line of early failures, therefore, may have had the effect of disturbing his mental balance. Constant brooding over the neglect offered to his genius may have so obliterated the line that divides right from wrong as to have led him, in despair of obtaining success by any other method, to imitate the example of Giotto." "Good God! And this man might have been my son-in-law!" cried my uncle. "Let me congratulate you upon your lucky deliverance from such a relationship." "If Angelo is an assassin," said my uncle, "who was the victim?" "That is the question which the picture will answer." "You mean that Angelo has transferred the features of the dead without alteration to the canvas?" "That is my meaning--yes." "And yet," remonstrated my uncle, "he exhibits his picture at Paris in a public gallery open to all. That is the very way to betray himself." "Exactly, if the dead man were a well-known person, which probably he was not." I sat silent, revolving in my mind the whole history of the strange picture, as I was by no means disposed to accept the Baronet's theory that Angelo was an actual assassin. I remembered the date assigned by the artist for the completion of his work. It was Christmas Day--the day of my brother's departure for the Continent. I recalled the red stain on his vest. Could it be that both George and Angelo were concerned in a murder? But why should one remain and the other become a fugitive? Was it the more guilty of the two that had fled? and had Angelo for his own purpose simply taken advantage of a deed that George alone had committed? Was the officer who had caused the fracas in the Vasari Gallery at Paris none other than George, who, angry with the artist for having painted a picture that might lead to the detection of the crime, had attempted to destroy it. Was the silver-haired old man--Matteo Caritio--an accessory to the deed? Touched with remorse, had he confessed his part in the plot to the priest of Rivoli, only to meet with death a day later at the hand of the man whose secret he had betrayed? I turned to listen to the Baronet, who was holding forth to my uncle. "You see now, Leslie," said he, "why he exercised such secrecy over the production of this picture, and why he kept his studio-door locked while painting it. It was because the model that he painted from, the model for his fallen Cæsar, was, in point of fact, a dead man."