On his return he said, "The painter has been asking a great many questions about you, and expressed a wish that you would sit to him as Pharaoh; he thinks you would make a capital Pharaoh." "I have no wish to appear on canvas," said I; "moreover, he can find much better Pharaohs than myself; and, if he wants a real Pharaoh, there is a certain Mr.Petulengro." "Petulengro ?" said my brother; "a strange kind of fellow came up to me some time ago in our town, and asked me about you; when I inquired his name, he told me Petulengro.

No, he will not do, he is too short; by-the-bye, do you not think that figure of Moses is somewhat short ?" And then it appeared to me that I had thought the figure of Moses somewhat short, and I told my brother so.

"Ah!" said my brother.
On the morrow my brother departed with the painter for the old town, and there the painter painted the mayor.

I did not see the picture for a great many years, when, chancing to be at the old town, I beheld it.
The original mayor was a mighty, portly man, with a bull's head, black hair, body like that of a dray horse, and legs and thighs corresponding; a man six foot high at the least.

To his bull's head, black hair, and body the painter had done justice; there was one point, however, in which the portrait did not correspond with the original--the legs were disproportionably short, the painter having substituted his own legs for those of the mayor, which when I perceived I rejoiced that I had not consented to be painted as Pharaoh, for, if I had, the chances are that he would have served me in exactly a similar way as he had served Moses and the mayor.
Short legs in a heroic picture will never do; and, upon the whole, I think the painter's attempt at the heroic in painting the mayor of the old town a decided failure.