are Dutchmen down here from Amsterdam learning how to print books and
paint pictures. Several of them are in Gian’s studio, I hear—every
once in a while I get them for a trip to the Lido or to Murano.

Gentile Bellini is his brother and looks very much like him. The Grand
Turk at Constantinople came here once and saw Gian Bellini at work in
the Great Hall. He had never seen a good picture before and was
amazed. He wanted the Senate to sell Gian to him, thinking he was a
slave. They humored the Pagan by hiring Gentile Bellini to go instead,
loaning him out for two years, so to speak.

Gentile went, and the Sultan, who never allowed any one to stand
before him, all having to grovel in the dirt, treated Gentile as an
equal. Gentile even taught the old rogue to draw a little, and they
say the painter had a key to every room in the palace, and was treated
like a prince.

Well, they got along all right, until one day Gentile drew the picture
of the head of John the Baptist on a charger.

“A man’s head doesn’t look like that when it is cut off,” said the
Grand Turk contemptuously. Gentile had forgotten that the Turk was on
familiar ground.

“Perhaps the Light of the Sun knows more about painting than I do!”
said Gentile, as he kept right on at his work.

“I may not know much about painting, but I’m no fool in some other
things I might name,” was the reply.