“Oh, he does not mean it seriously with painting.  His walk must be belles-lettres.  That is wi-ide.”

Naumann’s pronunciation of the vowel seemed to stretch the word satirically.  Will did not half like it, but managed to laugh:  and Mr. Casaubon, while he felt some disgust at the artist’s German accent, began to entertain a little respect for his judicious severity.

The respect was not diminished when Naumann, after drawing Will aside for a moment and looking, first at a large canvas, then at Mr. Casaubon, came forward again and said—­

“My friend Ladislaw thinks you will pardon me, sir, if I say that a sketch of your head would be invaluable to me for the St. Thomas Aquinas in my picture there.  It is too much to ask; but I so seldom see just what I want—­the idealistic in the real.”

“You astonish me greatly, sir,” said Mr. Casaubon, his looks improved with a glow of delight; “but if my poor physiognomy, which I have been accustomed to regard as of the commonest order, can be of any use to you in furnishing some traits for the angelical doctor, I shall feel honored.  That is to say, if the operation will not be a lengthy one; and if Mrs. Casaubon will not object to the delay.”

As for Dorothea, nothing could have pleased her more, unless it had been a miraculous voice pronouncing Mr. Casaubon the wisest and worthiest among the sons of men.  In that case her tottering faith would have become firm again.

Naumann’s apparatus was at hand in wonderful completeness, and the sketch went on at once as well as the conversation.  Dorothea sat down and subsided into calm silence, feeling happier than she had done for a long while before.  Every one about her seemed good, and she said to herself that Rome, if she had only been less ignorant, would have been full of beauty its sadness would have been winged with hope.  No nature could be less suspicious than hers:  when she was a child she believed in the gratitude of wasps and the honorable susceptibility of sparrows, and was proportionately indignant when their baseness was made manifest.

The adroit artist was asking Mr. Casaubon questions about English polities, which brought long answers, and, Will meanwhile had perched himself on some steps in the background overlooking all.

Presently Naumann said—­“Now if I could lay this by for half an hour and take it up again—­come and look, Ladislaw—­I think it is perfect so far.”

Will vented those adjuring interjections which imply that admiration is too strong for syntax; and Naumann said in a tone of piteous regret—­

“Ah—­now—­if I could but have had more—­but you have other engagements—­ I could not ask it—­or even to come again to-morrow.”

“Oh, let us stay!” said Dorothea.  “We have nothing to do to-day except go about, have we?” she added, looking entreatingly at Mr. Casaubon.  “It would be a pity not to make the head as good as possible.”