d forward to the
happy days to come when he might paint pictures and become a famous
artist.

Whenever a visitor came to the shop, Pietro would listen eagerly to his
talk and try to learn something of the great world of Art. Sometimes he
would even venture to ask questions, if the stranger happened to be one
who had travelled from afar.

'Where are the most beautiful pictures to be found?' he asked one day
when a Florentine painter had come to the little shop and had been
describing the glories he had seen in other cities. 'And where is it
that the greatest painters dwell?'

'That is an easy question to answer, my boy,' said the painter. 'All
that is fairest is to be found in Florence, the most beautiful city in
all the world, the City of Flowers. There one may find the best of
everything, but above all, the most beautiful pictures and the greatest
of painters. For no one there can bear to do only the second best, and
a man must attain to the very highest before the Florentines will call
him great. The walls of the churches and monasteries are covered with
pictures of saints and angels, and their beauty no words can describe.'

'I too will go to Florence, said Pietro to himself, and every day he
longed more and more to see that wonderful city.

It was no use to wait until he should have saved enough money to take
him there. He scarcely earned enough to live on from day to day. So at
last, poor as he was, he started off early one morning and said
good-bye to his old master and the hard work of the little shop in
Perugia. On he went down the same long white road which had seemed so
endless to him that day when, as a little child, he first came to
Perugia. Even now, when he was a strong young man, the way seemed long
and weary across that great plain, and he was often foot-sore and
discouraged. Day after day he travelled on, past the great lake which
lay like a sapphire in the bosom of the plain, past many towns and
little villages, until at last he came in sight of the City of Flowers.

It was a wonderful moment to Perugino, and he held his breath as he
looked. He had passed the brow of the hill, and stood beside a little
stream bordered by a row of tall, straight poplars which showed silvery
white against the blue sky. Beyond, nestling at the foot of the
encircling hills, lay the city of his dreams. Towers and palaces, a
crowding together of pale red sunbaked roofs, with the great dome of
the cathedral in the mids