famous in the history of Eastern collections, and upon it is set at a slanting angle a single priceless Damascus blade—­a sword to possess which an Arab or a Circassian would commit countless crimes.  Anastase Gouache is magnificent in all his tastes and in all his ways.  His studio and his dwelling are his only estate, his only capital, his only wealth, and he does not take the trouble to conceal the fact.  The very idea of a fixed income is as distasteful to him as the possibility of possessing it is distant and visionary.  There is always money in abundance, money for Faustina’s horses and carriages, money for Gouache’s select dinners, money for the expensive fancies of both.  The paint pot is the mine, the brush is the miner’s pick, and the vein has never failed, nor the hand trembled in working it.  A golden youth, a golden river flowing softly to the red gold sunset of the end—­that is life as it seems to Anastase and Faustina.

On the morning which opens this chronicle, Anastase was standing before his canvas, palette and brushes in hand, considering the nature of the human face in general and of young Orsino’s face in particular.

“I have known your father and mother for centuries,” observed the painter with a fine disregard of human limitations.  “Your father is the brown type of a dark man, and your mother is the olive type of a dark woman.  They are no more alike than a Red Indian and an Arab, but you are like both.  Are you brown or are you olive, my friend?  That is the question.  I would like to see you angry, or in love, or losing at play.  Those things bring out the real complexion.”

Orsino laughed and showed a remarkably solid set of teeth.  But he did not find anything to say.

“I would like to know the truth about your complexion,” said Anastase, meditatively.

“I have no particular reason for being angry,” answered Orsino, “and I am not in love—­”

“At your age!  Is it possible!”

“Quite.  But I will play cards with you if you like,” concluded the young man.

“No,” returned the other.  “It would be of no use.  You would win, and if you happened to win much, I should be in a diabolical scrape.  But I wish you would fall in love.  You should see how I would handle the green shadows under your eyes.”

“It is rather short notice.”

“The shorter the better.  I used to think that the only real happiness in life lay in getting into trouble, and the only real interest in getting out.”

“And have you changed your mind?”

“I?  No.  My mind has changed me.  It is astonishing how a man may love his wife under favourable circumstances.”

Anastase laid down his brushes and lit a cigarette.  Reubens would have sipped a few drops of Rhenish from a Venetian glass.  Teniers would have lit a clay pipe.  Duerer would perhaps have swallowed a pint of Nueremberg beer, and Greuse or Mignard would have resorted to their snuff-boxes.  We do not know what Michelangelo or Perugino did under the circumstances, but it is tolerably evident that the man of the nineteenth century cannot think without talking and cannot talk without cigarettes.  Therefore Anastase began to smoke and Orsino, being young and imitative, followed his example.