She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature copy of the
Madonna della Seggiola. Gaining her ear quietly one evening, I asked her
whether she knew that remarkable man, Mr. Theobald.
"Know him!" she exclaimed; "know poor Theobald! All Florence knows him,
his flame-coloured locks, his black velvet coat, his interminable
harangues on the beautiful, and his wondrous Madonna that mortal eye has
never seen, and that mortal patience has quite given up expecting."
"Really," I cried, "you don't believe in his Madonna?"
"My dear ingenuous youth," rejoined my shrewd friend, "has he made a
convert of you? Well, we all believed in him once; he came down upon
Florence and took the town by storm. Another Raphael, at the very least,
had been born among men, and the poor dear United States were to have the
credit of him. Hadn't he the very hair of Raphael flowing down on his
shoulders? The hair, alas, but not the head! We swallowed him whole,
however; we hung upon his lips and proclaimed his genius on the house-
tops. The women were all dying to sit to him for their portraits and be
made immortal, like Leonardo's Joconde.
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