“Be contented, madam,” I answered, gravely.

She dropped her eyes again and was silent.  Then exhaling a full rich sigh, as she gathered her shawl together—­“He was a magnificent genius!”

I bowed, and we separated.

Passing through a narrow side street on my way back to my hotel, I perceived above a doorway a sign which it seemed to me I had read before.  I suddenly remembered that it was identical with the superscription of a card that I had carried for an hour in my waistcoat pocket.  On the threshold stood the ingenious artist whose claims to public favour were thus distinctly signalised, smoking a pipe in the evening air, and giving the finishing polish with a bit of rag to one of his inimitable “combinations.”  I caught the expressive curl of a couple of tails.  He recognised me, removed his little red cap with a most obsequious bow, and motioned me to enter his studio.  I returned his salute and passed on, vexed with the apparition.  For a week afterwards, whenever I was seized among the ruins of triumphant Rome with some peculiarly poignant memory of Theobald’s transcendent illusions and deplorable failure, I seemed to hear a fantastic, impertinent murmur, “Cats and monkeys, monkeys and cats; all human life there!”