Another wreath, from Count Caloveglia—­an uncommonly pretty one, with a simple but heartfelt inscription—­created legitimate surprise.  Those white camellias, people reckoned, could not have cost less than twenty francs, and everybody knew that the dear old boy was as poor as a church mouse and that, moreover, he had enjoyed nothing but a bowing acquaintance with the deceased lady.  He had indeed only spoken to her once in his life.  But her face—­her face had left an indelible impression on his sensitive and artistic mind.

There was something Greek about Count Caloveglia.  His pedigree, uncontaminated by Moor or Spaniard, went back to hoariest antiquity.  Many people said he was a reincarnation of old Hellas.  Elbowing his way through crowded cities or chatting with sunburnt peasant-lads among the vineyards, he received thrills of pleasurable inspiration—­thrills to which grosser natures are inaccessible.  He loved to watch the bodily movements of his fellow-creatures and all the eloquent gestures of Southern life—­the lingering smile, the sullen stare of anger, the firm or flaccid step.  Within this world of humdrum happenings he created a world of his own, a sculptor’s paradise.  Colour said little to him.  He was enamoured of form, the lively passion of the flesh, the tremulous play of nerve and muscle.  A connoisseur of pose and expression, he looked at mankind from the plastic point of view, peering through accidentals into what was spiritual, pre-ordained, inevitable; striving to interpret—­to waylay and hold fast—­that divinity, fair or foul, which resides within one and all of us.  How would this one look, divested of ephemeral appurtenances and standing there, in bronze or marble; what were the essential qualities of those features—­their aesthetic mission to men like himself; to what type or relic of the classic age might they be assimilated?  He was for ever disentangling the eternal from mundane accessories.  And there was an element of the eternal, he used to declare, in every creature of earth.

His was an enviable life.  He dwelt among masterpieces.  They were his beacons, his comrades, his realities.  As for other things—­the social accidents of time and place, his cares and his poverty—­he wore them lightly; they sat upon his shoulders with easy grace, like his own threadbare coat.  When he walked among men he could not help contriving imaginary statuary in his head, historical portraits or legendary groups; the faces and attitudes of those he encountered—­each one found a place in the teeming realm of his creative phantasy, each one beckoned to him, from afar, as a joyous and necessary revelation.

An enviable life; and never more enviable than on the occasion when he was introduced, at some absurd tea-party to the lady known as the Commissioner’s stepsister.  The face!  It took possession of him.  It haunted his artistic dreamings from the same day onwards.  He had always cherished ambitious designs—­none more ambitious than a certain piece of work conceived in the bold Pergamese manner, a noble cluster of women to be entitled “The Eumenides.” . . .  Her face!  That wonderful face proclaimed itself the keynote of the group.  If he lived a thousand years he would never behold its like again.  What would he not have given to model the lady, then and there!