This friend, Timoteo della Vita, had been very dear to the
child, had played with him and jested with him, made him toys and
told him stories, and he was very full of pain at Timoteo's loss.
Yet he told himself not to mind, for had not Timoteo said to him,
"I go as goldsmith's 'prentice to the best of men; but I mean to
become a painter"? And the child understood that to be a painter
was to be the greatest and wisest the world held; he quite
understood that, for he was Raffaelle, the seven-year-old son of
Signor Giovanni Sanzio.
He was a very happy little boy here in this stately, yet homely
and kindly Urbino, where his people had come for refuge when the
lances of Malatesta had ravaged and ruined their homestead. He had
the dearest old grandfather in all the world; he had a loving
mother, and he had a father who was very tender to him, and
painted him among the angels of heaven, and was always full of
pleasant conceits and admirable learning, and such true love of
art that the child breathed it with every breath, as he could
breathe the sweetness of a cowslip-bell when he held one in his
hands up to his nostrils. It was good in those days to live in old
Urbino. It was not, indeed, so brilliant a place as it became in a
later day, when Ariosto came there, and Bembo and Castiglione and
many another witty and learned gentleman, and the Courts of Love
were held with ingenious rhyme and pretty sentiment, sad only for
wantonness.
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