"Old Deposit is going to be a signpost," they cried to one another
so merrily that the spiders, who are not companionable creatures,
felt themselves compelled to come to the doors of their dens and
chuckle too. A signpost! Lampblack, stretched out in an ecstasy
upon the board, roused himself shivering from his dreams, and
gazed at his own metamorphosis. He had been made into seven
letters, thus:--
BANDITA
This word in the Italian country, where the English painter's
studio was, means, Do not trespass, do not shoot, do not show
yourself here: anything, indeed, that is peremptory and uncivil to
all trespassers. In these seven letters, outspread upon the board,
was Lampblack crucified!
Farewell, ambitious hopes and happy dreams! He had been employed
to paint a signboard, a thing stoned by the boys, blown on by the
winds, gnawed by the rats, and drenched with the winter's rains.
Better the dust and the cobwebs of his old corner than such shame
as this!
But help was there none. His fate was fixed. He was dried with a
drench of turpentine, hastily clothed in a coat of copal, and here
he yet was fully aware of all his misery, was being borne away
upon the great board out of doors and handed to the gardener. For
the master was a hasty and ardent man, and had been stung into
impatience by the slaughter of some favorite blue thrushes in his
ilex trees that day, and so in his haste had chosen to do
journeyman's work himself.
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