recalled delightfully those little northern towns in the debatable
region which from a critic's point of view may be considered Lombard or
Venetian, with a tendency to be neither but rather a Transalpine
Bavaria. To me also the glow of the Burgundy on the tablecloth brought
back strange provincial altarpieces in this territory--marvels in
crimson and gold, and a riddle for the connoisseur. Then the talk
reached higher latitudes. He mused aloud about that very simple reaction
which we call the sense of beauty and have resolutely sophisticated ever
since criticism existed--I intent meanwhile and eating most of a mallard
as sanguine as a decollation of the Baptist. By the cheese Anitchkoff
seemed confident of my sympathy, and I, having found nothing amiss in
him except an imperfect enjoyment of the pleasures of the table, was
planning how least imprudently might be raised the topic of the Del
Puente Giorgione. But it was he who spoke first. At the coffee he asked
me with admirable simplicity what people said about the affair, and I
answered with equal candour.

"You too have wondered," he continued.

"Of course, but nothing worse," I replied.

Then with the hesitancy of a man approaching a dire chagrin, and yet with
a rueful appreciation of the humour of the predicament that I despair of
reproducing, he began:

"It happened about this way. When I first came to Italy and began to meet
the friends of Mantovani, they told me of an early Giorgione he owned but
rarely showed. He used to speak of it affectionately as 'il mio Zorzi,'
to distinguish it perhaps from the more important example he had sold to
one of our dilettante iron-masters. The little unfinished portrait I