full of twilight and one great picture, nobody within but a girl and
her little slave,--the one watching her mistress, the other saying
dreadfully devout prayers on an amber rosary, and of course she didn't
see him, or didn't appear to. After he got there, he wondered what
on earth he came for, it was so dark and poky, and he began to feel
uncomfortably,--when all of a sudden a great ray of sunset dashed
through the window, and drowned the place in the splendor of the
illumined painting. Papa adores rich colors; and he might have been
satiated here, except that such things make you want more. It was a
Venus;--no, though, it couldn't have been a Venus in a church, could it?
Well, then, a Magdalen, I guess, or a Madonna, or something. I fancy the
man painted for himself, and christened for others. So, when I was born,
some years afterward, papa, gratefully remembering this dazzling little
vignette of his youth, was absurd enough to christen me Giorgione.
That's how I came by my identity; but the folks all call me Yone,--a
baby name.

I'm a blonde, you know,--none of your silver-washed things. I wouldn't
give a _fico_ for a girl with flaxen hair; she might as well be a wax
doll, and have her eyes moved by a wire; besides, they've no souls.
I imagine they were remnants at our creation, and somehow scrambled
together, and managed to get up a little life among themselves; but it's
good for nothing, and everybody sees through the pretence. They're glass
chips, and brittle shavings, slender pinkish scrids,--no name for them;
but just you say blonde, soft and slow and rolling,--it brings up
a brilliant, golden vitality, all manner of white and torrid
magnificences, and you see me! I've watched little bugs--gold
rose-chafers--lie steeping in the sun, till every atom of them must have
been searched with the warm radiance, and have felt, that, when they
reached that point, I was just like them, golden all through,--not dyed,