264 THE STORIES OF NOTED PAINTINGS.. 



her way to Paris. Her father soon followed after her, and in the 

 guise of a beggar, sought her from door to door. At last he 

 found her as the richly attired mistress of a young nobleman. 

 They recognized each other at the door, and she offered him a 

 purse of gold which he refused, but besought her to go back 

 with him. When he found that it was in vain for him to urge, 

 lie returned to his home, and sent back in his place the young 

 lover of Linda. This one sings under her windows the beautiful 

 songs of Savoy and of the early love, till every home instinct is 

 stirred in her heart and the old ties lead her back to duty and 

 repentance. This story has been wrought into one of the most 

 interesting of the French operas, in which the wanderer, having 

 lost her reason, is led by the power and associations of music all 

 the long way back to her home and friends. The painting shows 

 the handsome Savoyard thus conducting her, and they are 

 "almost there." 



LUCRETIA, THE ROMAN. 



By GUIDO RENI (born 1575, died 1642). The original is in 

 the Capitoline Gallery of paintings in Rome. The story of 

 Lucretia is told by Livy in manner as follows : Now it happened, 

 in the year of Rome 242 (510 B. C.), that Sextus, the eldest son 

 of King Tarquin the Proud, was seized with a wicked passion 

 for Lucretia, the wife of his cousin, Tarquin of Collatia ; and 

 one night while her husband was away to the wars, he gained 

 entrance to her room and by cowardly threats compelled her to 

 submit to him. Immediately that she was at liberty. Lucretia 

 sent in haste to Rome for her father, and to the camp for her 

 husband ; and when they came she told them of the wicked deed 

 of Sextus, and she said, " If ye be men avenge it." And they 

 swore to her that they would avenge it. Then she said again, 

 " I am not guilty, yet must I too share in the punishment of 

 this deed, lest any should think that they may be false to their 

 husbands and live." And she drew a knife from her bosom and 

 stabbed herself to the heart. From this affecting tragedy sprang 

 the revolution which banished the last tyrant from Rome and 

 made Junius Brutus and Tarquin, the husband of Lucretia, the 

 first Consuls of the new Republic. 



