He stole to the window, seated himself, set down his paint-box, and began hastily to dot. Meanwhile Liana heard her very cultivated, well-read chambermaid read to her out of the second volume of Fénelon's _Œuvres Spirituelles_. Zefisio was not affected by the Archbishop in the least,--what he caught about pure love (_sur le pur amour de Dieu_) he perverted into an impure by applications, and let himself be devilishly inflamed by the divine,--for the rest what there was touching in Liana's relations he left as it was, as he had now to paint. Odiously did his motley-colored panther-eyes lick like red, sharp tiger-tongues over the sweet, soft countenance!--"Dear Justa, stop, the reading is disagreeable to thee, thou breathest so short!" said she at last, because she heard the portrait-painter breathe. It was no sacrifice to him, but a foretaste, a sweet early-bit, to put off the kiss of this tender little hand and lip and the whole exhibition of his burning heart, until he saw her outline dotted off with the poison-tints on the white ivory by the rapid dotting machine of his hand. At length he had her, many-colored[24] on white. "Very well, dear Justa," said she, "the prayer bell tolls; thou canst not see any longer. Rather lead me to the instrument,"--namely the harmonica. She did so. Bouverot gave Justa a sign to retire. She did that too. The yellow garden-spider now ran up to the tender, white flower. The spider heard her evening choral not without enjoyment, and the devout upcasting of her ruined eyes seemed to him a right picturesque idea, which the true _painter_[25] resolved to transfer to the ivory leaf, if it could be done. "Lovely goddess!" cried he, suddenly, with Albano's stolen voice, into the midst of those holy tones, which Albano had once, in a happier hour, but more nobly, interrupted. She listened with alarm, but hardly believing her own ear in this night. The astonishment did not displease the prospect painter--for her face was his prospect--by any means whatever; "remember this harmonica in the thunder-house." He confounded it with the water-house. "You here, Count?--Justa! where art thou?" cried she distressfully. "Justa, come here!" he added, calling after her. The maiden followed his voice and his--eye. "Gracious damsel?" asked she. But now Liana had not the heart to ask about the door and the admission-ticket of the Count. To speak French with her lover would not do, as the maid understood it; hence it was that in Vienna in the years of the Revolution they forbade this language very judiciously, because it so surely and pestilentially spreads a certain _equality_,--_freedom_ follows,--between the nobility and the servile orders. Maliciously and joyfully did Bouverot, to whom she now seemed to betray a serviceable mistrust about the Count, which pointed out a freer play-room for his character mask, remind the perplexed maiden of her commands for Justa; she must now cause her to bring a light.