"
"I shall have no wife; I shall marry myself to painting," said
Raffaelle, with a little grave, wise face looking out from under
the golden roof of his fair hair. For he was never tired of
watching his father painting the saints with their branch of palm
on their ground of blue or of gold, or Maestro Benedetto making
the dull clay glow with angels' wings and prophets' robes and holy
legends told in color.
Now, one day, as Raffaelle was standing and looking thus at his
favorite window in the potter's house, his friend, the handsome,
black-browed Luca, who was also standing there, did sigh so deeply
and so deplorably that the child was startled from his dreams.
"Good Luca, what ails you?" he murmured, winding his arms about
the young man's knees.
"Oh, 'Faello!" mourned the apprentice, woefully. "Here is such a
chance to win the hand of Pacifica if only I had talent--such
talent as that Giorgio of Gubbio has! If the good Lord had only
gifted me with a master's skill, instead of all this bodily
strength and sinew, like a wild hog of the woods, which avails me
nothing here!"
"What chance is it?" asked Raffaelle, "and what is there new about
Pacifica? She told me nothing, and I was with her an hour."
"Dear simple one, she knows nothing of it," said Luca, heaving
another tremendous sigh from his heart's deepest depths.
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