him?"

[Pg 16]

"I got the bird during the lifetime of my late lamented husband," explained the lady of the house, with some confusion.

Finally, the conquered sphinx affectionately confided to me his name: "Little Koko! Darling Koko!" But I transferred Koko from my fist to his cage, and put him on to the swinging ring, which he seized, and began to climb upwards with his beak. He was a veritable triped! On settling comfortably in his ring, he made me a low bow, and cried with a naïve inflexion of voice—"Your humble servant!"

"Positively marvellous!" gasped the lady-mother; "you ought really to be a tamer of animals!"

"I mean to be."

"Indeed! And what sort of beasts will you tame?"

"Men!"

[Pg 17]Not one of them understood me.

[Pg 17]

"Well, Mr. Poet," joked Muki Bagotay, "the ballad was a success; now let us see whether the picture also will be superlative."

"How do you want to see it?"

"So!" and with that he stuck his eye-glass into the corner of his nose.

"Then you're just mistaken!" said I, "for when I paint a portrait nobody is allowed in the room except myself and the sitter."

The whole company was amazed. Every one fancied that it would have been a public exhibition, and so they had all congregated together to see how a person's eye, mouth and ear came out. A large round table had been prepared for me, in order that a whole lot of them might sit around it with their hands on their elbows, and give me general directions as I went along: That eye a bit higher! that ringlet a little lower! A little more red here, and a little more white there! However, I declared plainly that I would not paint before a crowd; it was the rule in painting, I said. When portraits were being painted, nobody must be in the atelier but the painter and his model. Barabás,11 too, always 

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