he province were to the end of the world.

"Good-by, my boy. I shall never see you again."

And in truth it was the last time that Mariano saw that pale face with
its great expressionless eyes, now almost wiped out of his memory like a
whitish spot in which, in spite of all his efforts, he could not succeed
in restoring the outline of the features.

In the city his life was radically different. Then for the first time he
understood what it was his hands were striving for as they moved the
charcoal over the whitewashed walls. Art was revealed to his eyes in
those silent afternoons, passed in the convent where the provincial
museum was situated, while his master, Don Rafael, argued with other
gentlemen in the professor's hall, or signed papers in the secretary's
office.

Mariano lived at his protector's house, at once his servant and his
pupil. He carried letters to the dean and the other canons, who were
friends of his master and who accompanied him on his walks or spent
social evenings in his studio. More than once he visited the locutories
of nunneries, to deliver through the heavy gratings presents from Don
Rafael to certain black and white shadows, which attracted by this
sturdy young country boy, and aware that he meant to be a painter,
overwhelmed him with the eager questions born of their seclusion. Before
he went away they would hand him, through the revolving window, cakes
and candied lemons or some other goody, and then, with a word of advice,
would say good-by in their thin, soft voices, which sifted through the
iron of the gratings.

"Be a good boy, little Mariano. Study, pray. Be a good Christian, the
Lord will protect you and perhaps you will get to be as great a painter
as Don Rafael, who is one of the first in the world."

How the master laughed at the memory of the childish simplicity that
made him see in his master the most marvelous painter on earth!...
Mornings, when he attended the classes in the School of Fine Arts, he
grew angry at his comrades, a disrespectful rabble, brought up in the
streets, sons of mechanics, who, as soon as the professor turned his
back, pelted each other with the crumbs of bread meant to wipe out their
drawings, and cursed Don Rafael, calling him a "Christer" and a
"Jesuit."

The afternoon Mariano passed in the studio, at his master's side. How
excited he was the first time he placed a palette in his hand and
allowed him to copy on an old canvas a child St. John whic