Giovanni Battista was not able to be long outside the workshop, no doubt because his conscience troubled him, and though with difficulty, he got up and left. Kennedy, Cæsar, and the two Spaniards went toward the Piazza, del Campidoglio, and Buonacossi marched off in the opposite direction.
On reaching the Via Nazionale, Kennedy took his leave and Cæsar remained with the two Spaniards. The red, fleshy one, who had the air of a bully, started in to make fun of the Italians, and to mimic their bows and salutes; then he said that he had an engagement with a woman and made haste to take his leave.
When he had gone, the grave Spaniard with the sour face, said to Cæsar:
“That chap is like the dandies here; that’s why he imitates them so well.”
Afterwards Cortés talked about his studies in painting; he didn’t get on well, he had no money, and anyway Rome didn’t please him at all. Everything seemed wrong to him, absurd, ridiculous.
Cæsar, after he had said good-bye to him, murmured: “The truth is that we Spaniards are impossible people.”
XVI. THE PORTRAIT OF A POPE
Two or three days later Cæsar met the Spaniard Cortés in the Piazza Colonna. They bowed. The thin, sour-looking painter was walking with a beardless young German, red and snub-nosed. This young man was a painter too, Cortés said; he wore a green hat with a cock’s feather, a blue cape, thick eyeglasses, big boots, and had a certain air of being a blond Chinaman.
“Would you like to come to the Doria gallery with us?” asked Cortés.