Maestro Benedetto had four apprentices or pupils in that time
learning to become figuli, but the one whom Raffaelle liked the
most (and Pacifica too) was one Luca Torelli, of a village above
in the mountains,--a youth with a noble, dark, pensive beauty of
his own, and a fearless gait, and a supple, tall, slender figure
that would have looked well in the light coat of mail and silken
doublet of a man-at-arms. In sooth, the spirit of Messer Luca was
more made for war and its risks and glories than for the wheel and
the brush of the bottega; but he had loved Pacifica ever since he
had come down one careless holy-day into Urbino, and had bound
himself to her father's service in a heedless moment of eagerness
to breathe the same air and dwell under the same roof as she did.
He had gained little for his pains: to see her at mass and at
mealtimes, now and then to be allowed to bring water from the well
for her or feed her pigeons, to see her gray gown go down between
the orchard trees and catch the sunlight, to hear the hum of her
spinning wheel, the thrum of her viol--this was the uttermost he
got of joy in two long years; and how he envied Raffaelle running
along the stone floor of the loggia to leap into her arms, to hang
upon her skirts, to pick the summer fruit with her, and sort with
her the autumn herbs for drying!
"I love Pacifica!" he would say, with a groan, to Raffaelle; and
Raffaelle would say, with a smile, "Ah, Luca, so do I!"
"It is not the same thing, my dear," sighed Luca; "I want her for
my wife.
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