The house of Maestro Benedetto was a long stone building, with a
loggia at the back all overclimbed by hardy rose trees, and
looking on a garden that was more than half an orchard, and in
which grew abundantly pear trees, plum trees, and wood strawberries.
The lancet windows of his workshop looked on all this quiet greenery.
There were so many such pleasant workshops then in the land--calm,
godly, homelike places, filled from without with song of birds and
scent of herbs and blossoms. Nowadays men work in crowded, stinking
cities, in close factory chambers; and their work is barren as their
lives are.
The little son of neighbor Sanzio ran in and out this bigger,
wider house and garden of Maestro Benedetto at his pleasure, for
the maiden Pacifica was always glad to see him, and even the
sombre master-potter would unbend to him, and show him how to lay
the color on to the tremulous, fugitive, unbaked biscuit.
Pacifica was a lovely young woman of some seventeen or eighteen
summers; and perhaps Raffaelle was but remembering her when he
painted in his after-years the face of his Madonna di San Sisto.
He loved her as he loved everything that was beautiful and every
one who was kind; and almost better than his own beloved father's
studio, almost better than his dear old grandsire's cheerful
little shop, did he love this grave, silent, sweet-smelling, sun-
pierced, shadowy old house of Maestro Benedetto.
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