Paolo Cagliari had not known what he would do until the old man's
suggestion seemed to make his vision less vaguely inaccessible, and
before they reached the landing he had learned, by a judicious
indifference which sharpened his companion's loquacity, that Messer
Girolamo lived there alone with his daughter, who went about always with
a bambino in her arms--the child of a dead sister.

There could be no doubt; yet, to keep the old man talking, he put the
question, "She is very beautiful, the donzella?"

"Eccellenza"--with a pause and deprecatory movement of the
shoulders--"_cosi_--so-so--a little pale--like a saint--devote. For the
poor? Good, _gentile_, the donzel of Messer Girolamo. _Bella_, with rosy
colors? _Non_!"

With the Venetians there could be no sharp distinction between the
decorative and the fine arts, as the fine arts were employed by them
without limit in their sumptuous decorations; and that which elsewhere
would have been merely decorative they raised, by exquisite quality and
finish, to a point which deserved to be termed art, without
qualifications.

The Veronese, who had been knighted by the Doge, could scarcely go
unrecognized to any art establishment in any quarter of Venice, and with
unconcealed pleasure Girolamo bowed low before this master who had come
to do him honor; displaying all that the initiated would hold most
precious among his treasures--that design, faded and dim, almost
unrecognizable, of those early mosaics of the Master Pietro--he held
nothing back. It was a day of honor for his house, and the two were
alone in his cabinet.