and the sunshine he worked
into every canvas he attempted, was only a reflection of the
sparkling, gem-like radiance of his own nature. He absorbed from
earth, air, sky, the waters and men, and transmuted all dross
into gold. To him all things were good.

--_Letter From Regnault_

[Illustration: FORTUNY]

Now, once upon a day there was a swart, stubby boy by the name of Mariano
Fortuny. He was ten years old, going on 'leven, and lived with his
grandfather away up and up four flights of rickety stairs in an old house
at the village of Reus, in Spain. Mariano's father had died some years
before--died mysteriously in a drunken fight at a fair, where he ran a
Punch and Judy show. Some said the Devil had come and carried him off,
just as he nightly did Mr. Punch.

Frowsy, little, shock-headed Mariano didn't feel so awfully bad when his
father died, because his father used to make him turn the hand-organ all
day, and half the night, and take up the collections; and the fond parent
used to cuff him when there were less than ten coppers in the tambourine.
They traveled around from place to place, with a big yellow dog and a
little blue wagon that contained the show. They hitched their wagon to a
dog. At night they would sleep in some shed back of a tavern, or under a
table at a market, and Mariano would pillow his head on the yellow dog
and curl up in a ball trying to keep warm.

When the father died, a tall man, who carried a sword and wore spurs, and
had two rows of brass buttons down the front of his coat, took the dog
and the wagon and the Punch and Judy show and sold 'em all--so as to get
money to pay the funeral expenses of the dead man.

The tall man with the sword might have sold little Mariano, too, or
thrown him in with the lot for good measure, but nobody seemed to want
the boy--they all had more boys than they really needed already.

A fat market-woman gave the lad a cake, and another one gave him two
oranges, and still another market-woman, fatter than the rest, blew her
nose violently on her check apron and said it was too bad a boy like that
didn't have a mother.

Mariano never had a mother--at least none that he knew of, and it really
seemed as if it didn't make much difference, but now he began to cry,
and, since the fat woman had suggested it, really wished he had a mother,
after all.

There was an old priest standing by in the group. Mariano had not noticed
him. But when t