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I did not like the quiet life of Padua, and to avoid dying from ennui I fell in love with a celebrated Venetian courtesan. Her name was Ancilla; sometime after, the well-known dancer, Campioni, married her and took her to London, where she caused the death of a very worthy Englishman.
We condone his lack of pictorial power, because he could think, and we appreciate his Annunciation the "Ecce Ancilla Domini!" in the National Gallery, principally because he has looked deep into the legend, and revealed its true and human significance. It is a small picture, about three feet by two, and is destitute of all technical accomplishment, or even habit.
I lead a dissolute life Zawoiski Rinaldi L'Abbadie the young countess the Capuchin friar Z. Steffani Ancilla La Ramor I take a gondola at St. Job to go to Mestra.
I lead a dissolute life Zawoiski Rinaldi L'Abbadie the young countess the Capuchin friar Z. Steffani Ancilla La Ramor I take a gondola at St. Job to go to Mestra.
Spina had for her master a castrato who succeeded in making of her only a very ordinary singer, and in the absence of talent she was compelled, in order to get a living, to make the most of the beauty she had received from nature. I shall have occasion to speak again of Ancilla before her death.
Those who were most famous in my younger days were Ancilla and another called Spina, both the daughters of gondoliers, and both killed very young by the excesses of a profession which, in their eyes, was a noble one. At the age of twenty-two, Ancilla turned a dancer and Spina became a singer.
I shall have to mention her again in four years; now I have only to speak of a certain circumstance which brought my love adventure with her to a close after three or four weeks. Count Medini, a young, thoughtless fellow like myself, and with inclinations of much the same cast, had introduced me to Ancilla. The count was a confirmed gambler and a thorough enemy of fortune.
I complimented the ambassador on the loss of one of his tastes, and he told me he should be very sorry at such a loss, as it would warn him of his declining powers. "But," said I, "you used to like to perform the mysterious sacrifice of Love without a veil." "It was not I but Ancilla who liked it, and as I preferred pleasing her to pleasing myself, I gave in to her taste without any difficulty."
This famous courtezan, whose beauty was justly celebrated, feeling herself eaten away by an internal disease, promised to give a hundred louis to a doctor named Lucchesi, who by dint of mercury undertook to cure her, but Ancilla specified on the agreement that she was not to pay the aforesaid sum till Lucchesi had offered with her an amorous sacrifice.
Campioni, a celebrated Venetian dancer, imparted to the lovely Ancilla all the graces and the talents of which her physical perfections were susceptible, and married her.
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