creatures seemed to be all besieging her with
cries for restoration to their pristine shapes.
Poor girl, the only victim to her charms was
herself.

Roos and his servant used to quit her, and
set out for Rome, where the master spent
rollicking days in taverns, and when money failed
dashed off a picture which the man sold to the
first purchaser who would give for it enough
to keep the merry game alive. His pictures
were in this way made so cheap that they lost
all respectability and formed but a poor source
of subsistence to their author. Yet his
genius had no rival then upon the spot, and
he might have easily become a wealthy
man.

The society of painters from the Netherlands
at Rome—a society that called itself the
Bent—styled Roos, Mercury, for his rapidity,
a quality in which he was equalled by no artist
of his time. Count Martenitz, an Austrian
ambassador, and General Roos, a Swede,
famous for duelling propensities, once
disputed on the subject of the speed of hand
that characterized Philip Roos the painter.
The Count betted a number of gold
pieces that Philip would begin and
complete a picture while they played a certain
game of cards, that usually occupied about
thirty minutes; as we might now say, while
they played a rubber. The bet was taken,
and the painter readily enough submitted to
the trial. Easel and brushes were brought
into the drawing room and a canvas of the
size usually employed for the sketching of a
head—a tela di testa—was laid upon the easel
to be filled. The gentlemen sat down to
their cards, and Roos began to paint. Before
the game was over he informed them that his
work was done. He had covered the canvas
with a shepherd and two or three sheep and
goats placed in the middle of a landscape.
The general paid his lost bet, of which some of
the gold pieces went into the hands of the
artist, who, within a few hours, managed to
transfer them to the pocket of a tavern-
keeper.

The same painter once having aspired to
execute a grand piece, took a canvas forty
feet square. In sixteen days he filled it,
having put upon it in that time six hundred
figures of animals. In the foreground were
horses and oxen of the size of life; others were
in the distance, and they were all so well
designed and grouped, and placed in so
complete a landscape, that nothing but the united
testimony of many people would induce
belief that he had not spent many months in
the production of the piece; for,
notwithstanding his rapidity, his work was good: of
course his best pictures were those that he
composed with care and much deliberation,
but in his most rapid painting he was always
accurate in outline, harmonious in colour,
and above all remarkable for skill in grouping,
and for the variety of effect that he had at
his command. His backgrounds were all
different. He never repeated himself, and
he drew animals of any kind, not being
addicted specially to dogs or cows or goats or
sheep.

These were the talents that he wasted.
They scarcely paid his tavern bills and ill
maintained his wife. That ill-fated woman
lived as she could, hungrily at Tivoli, not only
wanting proper maintenance herself but
unable to provide properly for the animals
that constantly distracted her with hungry
cries. When her husband came to her some-
times for a few days and brought with him a
very little money he was deaf to all her
pleadings. Then she fell into a melancholy
silence, and he found her dull, so that he
travelled back the sooner to his jolly company.

The painter's servant took advantage of
his master's folly. That shrewd follower
had saved a little money and he borrowed
more. Then when the Rose of Tivoli got
caught in a tavern he painted a picture whereby
to effect his escape and sent off his man
to sell it "to the first dealer he found who was
not too much of a thief;" the man carried it
to a room of his own, locked it up and brought
back out of his own money, as if from the
dealers, whatever price he supposed would be
enough to satisfy his master. In that way
he not only accumulated a great number of
Roos's works, but at the same time withheld
them from the market and enhanced their
money value. When Roos died he sold off
his collection and acquired a little fortune.

Of Philip, as of his brother Nicholas, it
was easy to see at a glance whether he had
or had not money in his pocket. His
contemporaries have recorded that whenever he
had an empty pocket he sneaked along the
house-walls with a bowed head and a contrite
look, and dived into an alley if he saw any
one of his acquaintances upon his path.
When he had dollars in his pocket he held
up his head, poked out his chest, rested a
hand upon a hip and snuffed the air. He
charged down then upon any comrade whom
he saw, shook hands with him and dragged
him off whether he would or not, to treat
him at a tavern. All this time his wife
pined in the old ruin at Tivoli, ceasing to
think of him and mourning for her father who
was dead, and had cursed her in his dying
hour.

The Landgrave of Hesse Cassel who had
sent Philip Roos to Rome, not hearing from
him or receiving any pictures, supposed that he
was dead too, and coming afterwards by chance
to Rome himself, about the year sixteen
hundred and ninety-eight, was vexed to find how ill
his patronage had been rewarded. Roos for a
time avoided meeting him; but was at last
urged to present himself and honestly confess
his errors. The landgrave received him
kindly, and asked for a picture which the
painter vowed that he should have. But,
rapid artist as he was, and great as were his
obligations to the landgrace, both for social