of the eyes, rose to a high prominence towards the back, while
his forehead, which projected forward at the heavy brows, sloped
backwards in the direction of the summit. The large black eyes were deep
and hollow, and there were broad rings of dark colour around them, so
that they seemed strangely thrown into relief above the sunken,
colourless cheeks. Marzio's nose was long and pointed, very straight,
and descending so suddenly from the forehead as to make an angle with
the latter the reverse of the one most common in human faces. Seen in
profile, the brows formed the most prominent point, and the line of the
head ran back above, while the line of the nose fell inward from the
perpendicular down to the small curved nostrils. The short black
moustache was thick enough to hide the lips, though deep furrows
surrounded the mouth and terminated in a very prominent but pointed
chin. The whole face expressed unusual qualities and defects; the gifts
of the artist, the tenacity of the workman and the small astuteness of
the plebeian were mingled with an appearance of something which was not
precisely ideality, but which might easily be fanaticism.

Marzio was tall and very thin. His limbs seemed to move rather by the
impulse of a nervous current within than by any development of normal
force in the muscles, and his long and slender fingers, naturally yellow
and discoloured by the use of tools and the handling of cements, might
have been parts of a machine, for they had none of that look of humanity
which one seeks in the hand, and by which one instinctively judges the
character. He was dressed in a woollen blouse, which hung in odd folds
about his emaciated frame, but which betrayed the roundness of his
shoulders, and the extreme length of his arms. His apprentice,
Gianbattista Bordogni, wore the same costume; but beyond his clothing he
bore no trace of any resemblance to his master. He was not a bad type
of the young Roman of his class at five-and-twenty years of age. His
thick black hair curled all over his head, from his low forehead to the
back of his neck, and his head was of a good shape, full and round,
broad over the brows and high above the orifice of the ear. His eyes
were brown and not over large, but well set, and his nose was slightly
aquiline, while his delicate black moustache showed the pleasant curve
of his even lips. There was colour in his cheeks, too--that rich colour
which dark men sometimes have in their yo