chiseller; "you will not steal my commissions yet awhile.
What is the matter with you to-day? You find fault with half I say, and
the other half you do not hear at all. You seem to have lost your head,
Tista. Be steady over those acanthus leaves; everybody thinks an
acanthus leaf is the easiest thing in the world, whereas it is one of
the most difficult before you get to figures. Most chisellers seem to
copy their acanthus leaves from the cabbage in their soup. They work as
though they had never seen the plant growing. When the Greeks began to
carve Corinthian capitals, they must have worked from real leaves, as I
taught you to model when you were a boy. Few things are harder than a
good acanthus leaf."

"I should think women could do the delicate part of our work very well,"
said the apprentice, returning to the subject from which Marzio was
evidently trying to lead him. "Lucia has such very clever fingers."

"Idiot!" muttered Marzio between his teeth, not deigning to make any
further answer.

The distant boom of a gun broke upon the silence that followed, and
immediately the bells of all the neighbouring churches rang out in quick
succession. It was midday.

"I did not expect to finish that nose," said Marzio, rising from his
stool. He was a punctual man, who exacted punctuality in others, and in
spite of his thin frame and nervous ways, he loved his dinner. In five
minutes all the men had left the workshop, and Marzio and his apprentice
stood in the street, the former locking the heavy door with a lettered
padlock, while the younger man sniffed the fresh spring air that blew
from the west out of the square of San Carlo a Catenari down the Via dei
Falegnami in which the establishment of the silver-chiseller was
situated.

As Marzio fumbled with the fastenings of the door, two women came up and
stopped. Marzio had his back turned, and Gianbattista touched his hat in
silence. The younger of the two was a stout, black-haired woman of
eight-and-thirty years, dressed in a costume of dark green cloth, which
fitted very closely to her exuberantly-developed bust, and was somewhat
too elaborately trimmed with imitation of jet and black ribands. A high
bonnet, decorated with a bunch of purple glass grapes and dark green
leaves, surmounted the lady's massive head, and though carefully put on
and neatly tied, seemed too small for the wearer. Her ears were adorned
by long gold earrings, in each of which were three large garne