Then, taking flight again, they blackened the roof
of the palaces and once more swooped down like a mantle of metallic
luster on the groups of English tourists in green veils and round hats,
who called them in order to offer them grain.
Josephina, with childish eagerness, left her husband in order to buy a
cone full of grain, and spreading it out in her gloved hands she
gathered the wards of St. Mark around her; they rested on the flowers of
her head, fluttering like fantastic crests, they hopped on her
shoulders, or lined up on her outstretched arms, they clung desperately
to her slight hips, trying to walk around her waist, and others, more
daring, as if possessed of human mischievousness, scratched her breast,
reached out their beaks striving to caress her ruddy, half-opened, lips
through the veil. She laughed, trembling at the tickling of the animated
cloud that rubbed against her body. Her husband watched her, laughing
too, and certain that no one but she would understand him, he called to
her in Spanish.
"My, but you are beautiful! I wish I could paint your picture! If it
weren't for the people, I would kiss you."
Venice was the scene of her happiest days. She lived quietly while her
husband worked, taking odd corners of the city for his models. When he
left the house, her placid calm was not disturbed by any troublesome
thought. This was painting, she was sure,--and not the conditions of
affairs in Rome, where he would shut himself up with shameless women who
were not afraid to pose stark naked.
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