Marzios Crucifix and Zoroaster | Page 4

table, and
selecting a very fine-pointed punch, laid down his pipe for a moment
and set about putting the tiny pupils into the eyes. Two touches were
enough. He began smoking again, and contemplated what he had done.
It was the body of a large silver ewer of which Gianbattista was
ornamenting the neck and mouth, which were of a separate piece.
Amongst the intricate arabesques little angels'-heads were embossed,
and on one side a group of cherubs was bearing a "monstrance" with
the sacred Host through silver clouds. A hackneyed subject on church
vessels, but which had taken wonderful beauty under the skilled fingers
of the artist, who sat cursing the priest who was to use it, while

expending his best talents on its perfections.
"It is not bad," he said rather doubtfully. "Come and look at it, Tista,"
he added. The young man left his place and came and bent over his
master's shoulder, examining the piece with admiration. It was
characteristic of Marzio that he asked his apprentice's opinion. He was
an artist, and had the chief peculiarities of artists--namely, diffidence
concerning what he had done, and impatience of the criticism of others,
together with a strong desire to show his work as soon as it was
presentable.
"It is a masterpiece!" exclaimed Gianbattista. "What detail! I shall
never be able to finish anything like that cherub's face!"
"Do you think it is as good as the one I made last year, Tista?"
"Better," returned the young man confidently. "It is the best you have
ever made. I am quite sure of it. You should always work when you are
in a bad humour; you are so successful!"
"Bad humour! I am always in a bad humour," grumbled Marzio, rising
and walking about the brick floor, while he puffed clouds of acrid
smoke from his coarse pipe. "There is enough in this world to keep a
man in a bad humour all his life."
"I might say that," answered Gianbattista, turning round on his stool
and watching his master's angular movements as he rapidly paced the
room. "I might abuse fate--but you! You are rich, married, a father, a
great artist!"
"What stuff!" interrupted Marzio, standing still with his long legs apart,
and folding his arms as he spoke through his teeth, between which he
still held his pipe. "Rich? Yes--able to have a good coat for feast-days,
meat when I want it, and my brother's company when I don't want
it--for a luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the last
Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of
beads and saints and little books with crosses on them--who would leer
at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the

house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a
Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy on all
such jewels! A nice wife, who has a face like a head from a tombstone
in the Campo Varano for her husband, and who has brought up her
daughter to believe that her father is condemned to everlasting flames
because he hates cod-fish--salt cod-fish soaked in water! A wife who
sticks images in the lining of my hat to convert me, and sprinkles holy
water on me Then she thinks I am asleep, but I caught her at that the
other night--"
"Indeed, they say the devil does not like holy water," remarked
Gianbattista, laughing.
"And you want to many my daughter, you young fool," continued
Marzio, not heeding the interruption. "You do. I will tell you what she
is like. My daughter--yes!--she has fine eyes, but she has the tongue of
the--"
"Of her father," suggested Gianbattista, suddenly frowning.
"Yes--of her father, without her father's sense," cried Marzio angrily.
"With her eyes, those fine eyes!--those eyes!--you want to marry her. If
you wish to take her away, you may, and good riddance. I want no
daughter; there are too many women in the world already. They and the
priests do all the harm between them, because the priests know how to
think too well, and women never think at all. I wish you good luck of
your marriage and of your wife. If you were my son you would never
have thought of getting married. The mere idea of it made you send
your chisel through a cherub's eye last week and cost an hoax's time for
repairing. Is that the way to look at the great question of humanity? Ah!
if I were only a deputy in the Chambers, I would teach you the
philosophy of all that rubbish!"
"I thought you said the other day that you would not have any