“I unburdened myself the other day of this monstrous load of perplexity; I think it did me good, and I let it stand.  I was in a melancholy muddle, and I was trying to work myself free.  You know I like discussion, in a quiet way, and there is no one with whom I can have it as quietly as with you, most sagacious of cousins!  There is an excellent old lady with whom I often chat, and who talks very much to the point.  But Madame Grandoni has disliked Roderick from the first, and if I were to take her advice I would wash my hands of him.  You will laugh at me for my long face, but you would do that in any circumstances.  I am half ashamed of my letter, for I have a faith in my friend that is deeper than my doubts.  He was here last evening, talking about the Naples Museum, the Aristides, the bronzes, the Pompeian frescoes, with such a beautiful intelligence that doubt of the ultimate future seemed blasphemy.  I walked back to his lodging with him, and he was as mild as midsummer moonlight.  He has the ineffable something that charms and convinces; my last word about him shall not be a harsh one.”

Shortly after sending his letter, going one day into his friend’s studio, he found Roderick suffering from the grave infliction of a visit from Mr. Leavenworth.  Roderick submitted with extreme ill grace to being bored, and he was now evidently in a state of high exasperation.  He had lately begun a representation of a lazzarone lounging in the sun; an image of serene, irresponsible, sensuous life.  The real lazzarone, he had admitted, was a vile fellow; but the ideal lazzarone—­and his own had been subtly idealized—­was a precursor of the millennium.

Mr. Leavenworth had apparently just transferred his unhurrying gaze to the figure.

“Something in the style of the Dying Gladiator?” he sympathetically observed.

“Oh no,” said Roderick seriously, “he ’s not dying, he ’s only drunk!”

“Ah, but intoxication, you know,” Mr. Leavenworth rejoined, “is not a proper subject for sculpture.  Sculpture should not deal with transitory attitudes.”

“Lying dead drunk is not a transitory attitude!  Nothing is more permanent, more sculpturesque, more monumental!”

“An entertaining paradox,” said Mr. Leavenworth, “if we had time to exercise our wits upon it.  I remember at Florence an intoxicated figure by Michael Angelo which seemed to me a deplorable aberration of a great mind.  I myself touch liquor in no shape whatever.  I have traveled through Europe on cold water.  The most varied and attractive lists of wines are offered me, but I brush them aside.  No cork has ever been drawn at my command!”

“The movement of drawing a cork calls into play a very pretty set of muscles,” said Roderick.  “I think I will make a figure in that position.”