While thus addressing him, I perceived a sudden contraction of his fine features, indicative of strong internal emotion, the mystery of which was not developed for a considerable period after this conversation. At length he approached me, and, with a look of intense interest, inquired how near my father's villa was to Peschiera on the lake of Garda. "Within a league of it," I replied. Again he paced the apartment in silent abstraction, when suddenly his eagle-eye was lighted up with more than its wonted fire, and he exclaimed with animation, "Agreed! I will accompany you to Lombardy, and should I prove acceptable to your mother as a guest, I will paint a Madonna for her chapel. On my discretion, and my respect for her habits and feelings, you may rely."
On the succeeding day I introduced him to my mother. The elegant freedom of his address, and the spirit and originality of his conversation, made an immediate and favourable impression upon my beloved parent; and she afterwards acknowledged to me that, independently of his noble exterior, and his powerful claim upon her gratitude, she had never been so strongly prepossessed. It was on this occasion that he named himself Colonna. Since his refusal to reveal his name on the first day of our acquaintance, I had never repeated the inquiry. Subsequently, however, I discovered that this appellation had been assumed under circumstances of a disastrous and compulsory nature. After his interview with my mother, I accompanied him to his abode, where I was gratified with a view of the paintings and sketches which he had executed in Venice. His figures were fresh and masterly; his colouring had all the brilliant glow of the Venetian painters; while his bold and beautiful designs betrayed, as I had anticipated, the accurate drawing of the Tuscan school. His studies were from the antique, and from Italian life: naked figures, or with little drapery; female heads abounding with expression and loveliness; arms and legs, backs and busts; naked boys, bathing, running, and wrestling. He intimated that he had never yet painted for emolument, nor for the gratification of others; and added, carelessly, "what farther concerns me shall be revealed to you in our hours of leisure by the lake of Garda."