THE PORTRAIT I DID NOT PAINT
rate rate my statements, he changed his manner of indifference to one of attention and became, in the end, polite.
I obtained the promise of a reception by Cardinal Rampollo. On the day appointed I mounted a long flight of steps to the top of the Vatican and was ushered into a room richly furnished in gold and brocade. In a few minutes the Cardinal entered. He greeted me simply and kindly, and pointing to one corner of a high-backed gilt sofa, in the rococo style, he seated himself close to me in the other. We might have known each other all our lives. His easy and restful poise, his affable speech, led me to suppose that he was prepared for a friendly talk of any length and that affairs of State could wait.
"I am sorry that His Holiness cannot be approached upon the subject of having his portrait painted," was his ultimatum. "He is not well, is, as you know, old and weak; besides, he does not give sittings for the portraits that are painted of him." I reminded him that two French painters, Benjamin Constant and Chartran, had painted large portraits of the Pope that had been exhibited in the Salon and elsewhere, and that newspapers had printed long accounts of their interviews with the Pope and the sittings that had been accorded by him. Leaning forward towards me, and contracting his dark brows over his piercing coal-black eyes, he said earnestly, "Do you suppose that an artist, with his easel, his palette and brushes, and all his paraphernalia, could come here and enter the presence of the Holy Father without my knowledge? I am near him every moment, night and day, and no one approaches him but through me."
"You must believe me or the newspapers," continued the Cardinal, and added, "I think you should know that
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