Raffaelle's face grew very serious, too, and lost its
color, and his large hazel eyes looked very big and grave and
dark.
"Perhaps Signer Giovanni will be angry with me if ever he knows,"
thought poor Luca; but it was too late to alter anything now. The
child Sanzio had become his master.
So Raffaelle, unknown to any one else, worked on and on there in
the attic while the tulips bloomed and withered, and the
honeysuckle was in flower in the hedges, and the wheat and barley
were being cut in the quiet fields lying far down below in the
sunshine. For midsummer was come; the three months all but a week
had passed by. It was known that every one was ready to compete
for the duke's choice.
One afternoon Raffaelle took Luca by the hand and said to him,
"Come."
He led the young man up to the table, beneath the unglazed window,
where he had passed so many of these ninety days of the spring and
summer.
Luca gave a great cry, and stood gazing, gazing, gazing. Then he
fell on his knees and embraced the little feet of the child: it
was the first homage that he, whose life became one beautiful song
of praise, received from man.
"Dear Luca," he said softly, "do not do that. If it be indeed
good, let us thank God."
What his friend saw were the great oval dish and the great jar or
vase standing with the sunbeams full upon them, and the brushes
and the tools and the colors all strewn around.
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