“You do not believe in miracles, Giovanni Battista?” asked the Englishman.
“Yes, I believe in the earth’s miracles, making trees and flowers grow, and the miracle of children’s being born from their mothers. The other miracles I do not believe in. What for? They are so insignificant beside the works of Nature!”
“He is a pagan,” Kennedy again stated.
YOUNG PAINTERS
They were chatting, when three young lads came into the tavern, all three having the air of artists, black clothes, soft hats, flowing cravats, long hair, and pipes. “Two of them are fellow-countrymen of yours,” Kennedy told Cæsar.
“They are Spanish painters,” the old man added. “The other is a sculptor who has been in the Argentine, and he talks Spanish too.”
The three entered and sat down at the same table and were introduced to Cæsar. Everybody chattered. Buonacossi, the Italian, was a real type. Of very low stature, he had a giant’s torso and strong little legs. His head was like a woe-begone eagle, his nose hooked, thin, and reddish, eyes round, and hair black.
Buonacossi proved to be gay, exuberant, changeable, and full of vehemence.
He explained his artistic ideas with picturesque warmth, mingling them with blasphemies and curses. Things struck him as the best or the worst in the world. For him there doubtless were no middle terms.
One of the two Spaniards was serious, grave, jaundiced, sour-visaged, and named Cortés; the other, large, ordinary, fleshy, and coarse, seemed rather a bully.