The Romance of Giovanni Calvotti | Page 2

at evil fortune. I despise the goddess
Circumstance. Seeking to do me an evil turn this morning she has
benefited me, and I am contented in spite of her. Good gracious! Is a
man to lose everything because his stomach is empty? The goddess
Circumstance shall not keep my heart empty, let her keep my shelves
as bare as she will. My Lady of Circumstance, Giovanni Calvotti
proffers to you a polite but irrevocable defiance!
This morning my canvas child was a landscape. This afternoon it was
an inglorious smudge. It is now on its way back to the landscape

condition, and will have revived all its glories by to-morrow. It was
noon when I rang my bell.
'Madame,' I said to my landlady, in my cheerful Italian manner, 'will
you again extend to me your courtesy?'
My landlady is not an educated woman, but she is a good creature, and
has a delicate and refined susceptibility. She recognises in me a
gentleman. She reveres in my person a genius to which I make no
pretension. I am not a man of genius. A man of genius does one thing
supremely well. Some men of exceptional talent do many things
admirably, but nothing supremely well. I am a man of exceptional
talent. Pardon the modest candour which is compelled to assume the
garb of egotism.
My landlady looked at my canvas child, and then at me, and laughed.
'To Mr. Aaron's, sir?' Asking this, she put her hands upon the edges of
the framework of the canvas.
'Yes, madame,' I answered, for we have always the same formula on
Fridays at noon. 'To my estimable uncle round the corner.'
'Anything more than usual?' my landlady asked me.
'No, madame,' I answered. 'A loaf, a pound of coffee, half a pound of
bird's-eye tobacco, the ticket from my estimable uncle, a receipt for the
week's rent, and the change.'
My landlady laughed again and said, 'Very good, sir.' Then she went
downstairs with the picture, and I felt unhappy when my canvas child
was gone, and was fain (an idiom employed by your best writers) to
solace myself with my violin. So far there was nothing to mark this
Friday morning from any other Friday morning for the last nine weeks.
It is now nine weeks that I have been a hermit. I was very hungry, and
was glad to think of the coffee and the loaf. I should have told you that
my habits are very abstemious, and that I am admirably healthy on a
low diet. My native cheerfulness, my piano, my violin, my violoncello,

my canvas children, and my pipes, all nourish me like meat and wine. I
played upon my violin a little impromptu good-bye to my landscape--a
melodious farewell to a sweet creation. The time seemed long before
my landlady returned, and when I put back my violin in its case, I heard
a sound of crying on the stairs. I opened the door and looked out, and
there was a little English angel, whom I had never before seen, sitting
upon the topmost step, close to my attic door, crying as if her heart had
broken.
'What is the matter, my poor little maid?' I asked very tenderly, for I
know that young girls are easily frightened by strangers.
She looked up with eyes like the skies I was born under. The pretty
pale cheeks were all wet, and the pretty red lips were trembling, and
those beautiful blue heavens were raining as no blue skies ought to
rain.
'Ah, come, my child,' I said to her; 'how can I help you if you do not
tell me what is the matter?'
'Oh, signor,' she said, with many sobs and tears, 'I have spoiled your
beautiful picture.'
She held it up--my canvas child--all besmeared with mud. I could not
resist one exclamation of sorrow. The news was too sudden for my
self-possession to remain. But when I saw that the little English angel
began to weep afresh at this exclamation, I longed for one moment to
be able to get out of my own body, that I might chastise a poltroon so
un-philosophical. I took her by the hand instead, and led her into this
room and made her sit down, and, whilst I sponged the picture with
cold water, made her tell me how the accident had happened. For I
thought, in my Machiavellian Italian way, 'If she should go away
without having quite familiarised herself with this unhappy incident,
she will always be afraid of me.' Therefore I lured her on.
'Mrs. Hopkins asked me to take the picture to Mr. Aaron's,' she began,
still sobbing. 'I was just passing the corner when a gentleman leaped
out of a cab. The cab was moving at