The evolution of “Tedesco’s Rubina” was simpler than that of either of the preceding stories. Any one familiar with Capri will remember a grotto similar to the one described, and probably many visitors to that little terrestrial paradise have been made acquainted with the secret of the smugglers’ path down into the grotto. A dozen years or more ago, there was a very old model in Capri who had a remarkable history, and who was accustomed to drone on for hours at a stretch about her early experiences and the artists of a generation or two ago. Sketches of her at different periods of her life hung in most of the public resorts of the island. I made a careful study of this old and wrinkled face, still bearing traces of youthful beauty. The contrast between this painting and the plaster cast of the head of a Roman nymph which occupied a prominent place in my studio was the cause of many a jest, and called forth many a tradition of model life from the garrulous members of that profession. The visible proofs that the old woman had once been the great beauty of the island; the incident of the bust in the museum at Rome; the discovery of human bones in the grotto--all were interwoven together in a web of romance before I even thought of putting it on paper. When I came to write it out, it was very much like telling a threadbare story.
The Latin Quarter in Paris is the most fertile spot in the world for the growth of romances, most of them of the mushroom species. If a stenographer were to take down the stories he might hear any evening in a _brasserie_ there, he would have a unique volume of strange incidents--some of them incredible, perhaps, but all with much flavor of realism about them to make them interesting from a human point of view. Not a few strange suicides, incomprehensible alliances, marvellously curious and pathetic bits of human history, have come under my own notice there. Student life in the Latin Quarter is not all “beer and skittles,” for its sordid side is horribly depressing and hopeless. Few who have experienced it have ever entirely recovered from the taint of this unnatural and degrading life.
Away up in the top of one of the largest and most populous hotels of the quarter, an American artist has kept “bachelor hall” for a score of years or more. He is an animal-painter, and spends the winter in elaborating his summer’s studies, and in preparing immense canvases for sacrifice before that Juggernaut, the annual Salon. He received once a commission to paint a portrait--a “post-mortem,” as such a commission is usually called--of a deceased black-and-tan terrier. The only data he had to work from were a small American tintype and the tanned skin of the defunct pet. Having been inoculated with the spirit of modern French realism, the artist could not be content with constructing a portrait of the dog out of the materials provided, and went to a dog-fancier and hired an animal as near as could be like the one in the tintype. At the appointed hour the dog was brought to the studio in a covered basket. When the canvas was ready and the palette set, the artist opened the lid of the basket and the animal sprang out and began to run about the room. The artist thought the dog would soon make himself at home, so at first he did not attempt to secure him. But he shortly found that he grew wilder and more excited every moment, and that catching him was no easy matter. After knocking over all the furniture in the room except the heavy easel, he succeeded in cornering him and seized him by the collar. A savage bite through the thumb made him loose his hold, and the rôles of pursuer and pursued immediately changed. The beast flew into a terrible state of rage, snapping and snarling like a mad thing. As there was no safer refuge than the large easel, the artist climbed upon that to escape his infuriated enemy. By the aid of a long mahl-stock he fished up the bell-cord which hung within reach, and pulled it until the concierge came. The owner of the dog was speedily brought, and the siege of the studio was raised. The same artist brought in from the country one autumn a torpid snake, which he kept in a box all through the winter. One morning in spring he was horrified to find the reptile coiled up on the rug beside his bed. He killed it by dropping a heavy color-box on it, without stopping to find out whether it was venomous or not. It is easy to see how my story grew out of these two incidents.