merchant. A Mæcenas of ours has now been so uncritical as to fall in love with it."
"You speak a little too modestly about your art for one to be able to believe in your humility … especially as I suppose there is no reason for it." This latter I added because Minna looked at me reproachfully, as if she feared that the conversation might take a pointed and personal character.
Stephensen laughed and stroked his beard.
"Well, I have at least reason to wish that this new client will not be too critical, for such a hazardous undertaking does not succeed twice. But, anyhow, it is a good thing to be acquainted with what one is going to represent, and as to the good Correggio I have long ago found him out: the lady is by no means studying the Holy Bible, but reading a pastoral novel, and an improper one, too, I should venture to guess."
Though I, in reality, found this remark quite striking and could not help smiling, there was something so irritating, yes, even insulting, towards Minna in the self-satisfied smirk with which he accompanied it, that an almost irresistible impulse seized me to take him by the collar and push him down the steps at the top of which we were standing. I reflected whether in such case there was any possibility of his breaking his neck, and pictured to myself Minna's terror, the crowd of people round, and how the police would arrest me.
And all the while the unsuspecting man stood expatiating upon the beauty of the town that was stretched out in front of us. He was especially pleased with the Catholic church which, in the foreground, presented its two storeys of massive weather-beaten sandstone, in the elegant forms of a noble Baroc style. Between the clustered columns
