nd bent over
his master's shoulder, examining the piece with admiration. It was
characteristic of Marzio that he asked his apprentice's opinion. He was
an artist, and had the chief peculiarities of artists--namely,
diffidence concerning what he had done, and impatience of the criticism
of others, together with a strong desire to show his work as soon as it
was presentable.

"It is a masterpiece!" exclaimed Gianbattista. "What detail! I shall
never be able to finish anything like that cherub's face!"

"Do you think it is as good as the one I made last year, Tista?"

"Better," returned the young man confidently. "It is the best you have
ever made. I am quite sure of it. You should always work when you are in
a bad humour; you are so successful!"

"Bad humour! I am always in a bad humour," grumbled Marzio, rising and
walking about the brick floor, while he puffed clouds of acrid smoke
from his coarse pipe. "There is enough in this world to keep a man in a
bad humour all his life."

"I might say that," answered Gianbattista, turning round on his stool
and watching his master's angular movements as he rapidly paced the
room. "I might abuse fate--but you! You are rich, married, a father, a
great artist!"

"What stuff!" interrupted Marzio, standing still with his long legs
apart, and folding his arms as he spoke through his teeth, between which
he still held his pipe. "Rich? Yes--able to have a good coat for
feast-days, meat when I want it, and my brother's company when I don't
want it--for a luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the
last Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of
beads and saints and little books with crosses on them--who would leer
at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the
house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a
Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy on all
such jewels! A nice wife, who has a face like a head from a tombstone in
the Campo Varano for her husband, and who has brought up her daughter to
believe that her father is condemned to everlasting flames because he
hates cod-fish--salt cod-fish soaked in water! A wife who sticks images
in the lining of my hat to convert me, and sprinkles holy water on me
Then she thinks I am asleep, but I caught her at that the other night--"

"Indeed, they say the devil does not like holy water," remarked
Gianbattista, laughing.

"And you wan