After some reflection in the corner of the Pretorian where Anitchkoff once told me his story, I have come measurably into the clear about the whole matter.  Mantovani’s position is plain up to a certain point.  Either the ‘Zorzi’ was given to him or else he bought it in his hopeful youth.  In either case he surely kept it merely as a solemn hoax on his learned contemporaries.  He may have withheld it from Anitchkoff maliciously, or again out of simple considerateness for a trusting disciple.  When Mantovani came to set his worldly affairs in order, however, it must have struck him that the joke could not be perpetuated on the walls of the San Marcello gallery, while the panel was one that a great connoisseur would not willingly have inventoried by his executors.  It was at this time that he bestowed the ‘Zorzi’ upon the Marquesa del Puente, as a final token between them.  It may fairly be assumed that he knew her to be incapable of believing the precious souvenir to be a veritable Giorgione.  Such simplicity as that gift and credulity presuppose lay neither in his nature nor in hers.  Beyond this point certitudes fail us lamentably, and we are reduced to an exasperating balance of possibilities.  Did he send the picture as an elaborate and unavoidable slight? or was it essentially a delicate alms, in view of the Marquesa’s known poverty and proved resourcefulness? or, again, did he with a deeper perversity set the thing afloat to trouble the critical world after he was gone, foreseeing perhaps some such international comedy as was actually played with the ‘Zorzi’ as leading gentleman?  All these things must remain problematical for Mantovani cannot tell, and the Marquesa del Puente will not if indeed she knows.

THE LOMBARD RUNES

Professor Hauptmann dropped wearily into his chair at the noisy Milanese table d’hote and snarled out a surly “Mahlzeit” to the assembled feasters.  It was echoed sweetly from his left with a languishing “Mahlzeit, Herr Professor.”  The advance disconcerted him.  Resolving upon a policy of complete indifference to the fluffy and amiable vision beside him, he devoted himself singly to the food.  The risotto diminished as his knife travelled rhythmically between the plate and his bearded lips.  Conceding only the inevitable, nay the exacted courtesies to his neighbour, he performed still greater prodigies with the green peas, and it was not until he leaned back for a deft operation with a pocket comb, that the vivacious, blue-eyed one got her chance to ask if it were not the Herr Professor Hauptmann, the great authority on the Lombard tongue.  The query floored him; he could not deny that it was, and as curlylocks began to evince an intelligent interest in Lombard matters, his stiffness melted like wax under a burning glass.  He was soon if not the protagonist at least the object of an animated, yes fairly intimate conversation.