Page:Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/257

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ROMAN MODELS
219


tion. The Arab 'bournus' which was wrajjped round her never trembled, but when the time for rest came, she stepped down from the platform, and ap- proaching the most emphatic of the talkers, dealt him a tremendous slap on the cheek, such as raised a very storm of applause. And then a voice came in the silence — ' Oh ! cruel Bibbiana, one would say that like Samson you had struck nie with the jaw-bone of thy father ! I have lost a tooth by the attack I ' And it was true. The tooth was passed round from hand to hand, and it was immediately tied uj) and nailed to the wall with a Latin inscription taken from I do not know what remote stone — most justly unknown. The lines ran thus: — ' Ad memento nianibus Bibbiana valentissima difenditricis virtutem sua ! ' Amen, it con- cludes, and the hands of Bibbiana have become historical. Then there is Narella, who you would say had just arrived from the secret shades ot the Black Forest. A true, tiny fairy of the northern legends, dreamt of by Heine, and evoked by Goethe. She is a most beautiful blonde, very delicate, whose complexion reminds one a little by its tint of the pipes of Bohemia and works in mother-of-pearl. A large soft doll, that shuts her eyes, says ' Mamma ' and ' Papa,' and some other phrases, inclining to melancholy, and count- ing the sittings, but nothing more. In order to jiersuade her to come to your studio, you must promise her some flowers, an easy position, and some good cioarettes. Finally, lest this catalogue begins to tire you, I introduce to you Lucia, biu'sting with laughter, playing a tambourine, something like a wild colt in a large field. Lucietta is neither pretty nor ugly, but she is gay, merry and sprightly, if you do not have too much of her ; sometimes she becomes unbearable, and is chased from the studios like the plague. Then in the season of flowers she abandons the arts, and gives herself entirely to Flora, becoming the torment of the ' Piazza di Spagna ' and of the ' Via Con- dotti,' encouraged unfortunately by the delicate daughters of the Tweed and Tyne, who smile at her as they buy her little bunches of violets. But nothing is more pleasing or more thoroughly pic- turesque than that ' bizarre ' figure in the midst of a very rainbow, full of colour, or under the intense blue of a sky, embroidered by an almond tree in flower. These examples are cliosen from the most usual, and, if you wear a felt hat, with broad brim, considerably worn, and assume the abstracted air proper for an artist of the day, you will have them all drawn in with one cast of the net, but understand well you will have them all at the studio