the
threshold.

"Hist! They will see!" she protested under her breath.

"What do I care!" whispered the apprentice, as he kissed her cheek in
the dusky passage. Then they followed the rest.

CHAPTER II

That evening Marzio finished the last cherub's head on the ewer before
he left the shop. He had sent Gianbattista home, and had dismissed the
men who were working at a huge gilded grating ordered by a Roman prince
for a church he was decorating. Marzio worked on by the light of a
strong lamp until the features were all finished and he had indicated
the pupils of the eyes with the fine-pointed punch. Then he sat some
time at his bench with the beautiful piece of workmanship under his
fingers, looking hard at it and straining his eyes to find imperfections
that did not exist. At last he laid it down tenderly upon the stuffed
leather pad and stared at the green shade of the lamp, deep in thought.

The man's nature was in eternal conflict with itself, and he felt as
though he were the battle-ground of forces he could neither understand
nor control. A true artist in feeling, in the profound cultivation of
his tastes, in the laborious patience with which he executed his
designs, there was an element in his character and mind which was in
direct contradiction with the essence of what art is. If art can be said
to depend upon anything except itself, that something is religion. The
arts began in religious surroundings, in treating religious subjects,
and the history of the world from the time of the early Egyptians has
shown that where genius has lost faith in the supernatural, its efforts
to produce great works of lasting beauty in the sensual and material
atmosphere of another century have produced comparatively insignificant
results. The science of silver-chiselling began, so far as this age is
concerned, in the church. The tastes of Francis the First directed the
attention of the masters of the art to the making of ornaments for his
mistresses, and for a time the men who had made chalices for the Vatican
succeeded in making jewelry for Madame de Chateaubriand, Madame
d'Etampes, and Diane de Poitiers. But the art itself remained in the
church, and the marvels of _repousse_ gold and silver to be seen in the
church of Notre Dame des Victoires, the masterpieces of Ossani of Rome,
could not have been produced by any goldsmith who made jewelry for a
living.

Marzio Pandolfi knew all this better than any one, and he c