and that, if the authorities did not take care, he would become the accomplice of the most evil disposed people.
All these accumulated reports, all these criminations still more perfidious, since they were only founded upon vain hypothesis, were spread with sufficient rapidity to gravely prejudice the interests and reputation of the great artist. Salvator who, since the departure of Antonio had shut himself up in his studio, produced several paintings of rare merit, and which ought to have stamped his genius with a seal of glory. But thanks to the calumnies which enviers spread abroad unceasingly, it came into fashion to decry his works, as they decried his reputation; and in public exhibitions of paintings, pretended rivals to Salvator, people of the academy of San-Luca, and simple amateurs, no longer examined his paintings without shrugging their shoulders or shaking their heads with a most disdainful look. To listen to these gentlemen, sometimes the skies were too blue, or sometimes the trees were too green, or the figures were in a bad position, and then perspective was wanting. Every one had his say, and no one was sparing of his criticism.
The vain members of the college of San-Luca were not the least anxious for the ruin of Salvator; they could not pardon him for the triumph of having discovered the Magdalen of Antonio Scacciati. And painting was soon no longer an object for the hate of these miserable detractors. Salvator wrote sonnets admirably poetical; and they did not scruple to call him a plagiary, and cowardly to appropriate the originality of his works. No one thought of remedying these wrongs, so strong was the deplorable prejudice which attached itself to the name of Salvator, since the adventures in Ripetta street. Thus his position, far from regaining its former brilliancy, became every day more precarious. Confined in the modest home which the devoted friendship of dame Catherine preserved to him, under the weight of this anathema, the artist felt that he was failing; and it was under this discouragement that he finished two pictures of large di-
