s, in the city. During the summer he came with his family to live
in an estate in the valley.

This Don Rafael was a man of imposing gravity; a saint with a large
family of children, who wore a frock-coat as if it were a cassock and
spoke with the suavity of a friar through his white beard that covered
his thin, pink cheeks. In the village church they had a wonderful
picture painted by him, a _Purisima_, whose soft glowing colors made the
legs of the pious tremble. Besides, the eyes of the image had the
marvelous peculiarity of looking straight at those who contemplated it,
following them even though they changed position. A veritable miracle.
It seemed impossible that that good gentleman who came up every morning
in the summer to hear mass in the village, had painted that supernatural
work. An Englishman had tried to buy it for its weight in gold. No one
had seen the Englishman, but every one smiled sarcastically when they
commented on the offer. Yes, indeed, they were likely to let the picture
go! Let the heretics rage with all their millions. The _Purisima_ would
stay in her chapel to the envy of the whole world--and especially of the
neighboring villages.

When the parish priest went to visit Don Rafael to speak to him about
the blacksmith's son, the great man already knew about his ability. He
had seen his drawings in the village; the boy had some talent and it was
a pity not to guide him in the right path. After this came the visits
of the blacksmith and his son, both trembling when they found themselves
in the attic of the country house that the great painter had converted
into a studio, seeing close at hand the pots of color, the oily palette,
the brushes and those pale blue canvases on which the rosy, chubby
cheeks of the cherubim or the ecstatic face of the Mother of God were
beginning to assume form.

At the end of the summer the good blacksmith decided to follow Don
Rafael's advice. As long as he was so good as to consent to helping the
boy, he was not going to be the one to interfere with his good fortune.
The shop gave him enough to live on. All it meant was to work a few
years longer, to support himself till the end of his life beside the
anvil, without an assistant or a successor. His son was born to be
somebody, and it was a serious sin to stop his progress by scorning the
help of his good protector.

His mother, who constantly grew weaker and more sickly, cried as if the
journey to the capital of t