somebody had made an ineffectual effort to turn me into a
sausage."

"What does the doctor say?"

"Nothing. He is a man of action. He bled me because I had not the
strength to strangle him, and poured decoctions of boiled grass
down my throat because I could not speak. He has fantastic ideas
about the human body."

"But you will have to stay here several days," said Giovanni,
considerably amused by Gouache's view of his own case.

"Several days! Not even several hours, if I can help it."

"Things do not go so quickly in Rome. You must be patient."

"In order to starve, when there is food as near as the Corso?"
inquired the artist. "To be butchered by a Roman phlebotomist, and
drenched with infusions of hay by the Principessa Montevarchi,
when I might be devising means of being presented to her daughter?
What do you take me for? I suppose the young lady with the divine
eyes is her daughter, is she not?"

"You mean Donna Faustina, I suppose. Yes. She is the youngest,
just out of the Sacro Cuore. She was in the drawing-room when I
called just now. How did you see her?"

"Last night, as they brought me upstairs, I was lucky enough to
wake up just as she was looking at me. What eyes! I can think of