"As _I_ am!" and he laughed sadly. "Do _you_ know what I am? Who knows it not? A day labourer am I, cutting shells for women, with a woman's patience, whose stout arms are ashamed of him when they encounter a piece of marble. Well, perhaps, yesterday the matter was arranged so that the poor cripples will have nothing to reproach themselves for in future!" "You talk strangely--as if there were not room enough within a circle of two inches for a soul that can at times express itself in two words." "For the idea, possibly, but hardly for the execution." "You must have experienced that," said Theodore. "But are you _obliged_ to do what is so disagreeable to you?" The sick man cast a quiet look around the four bare walls, and said-- "I have got so used to the amount of luxury you see about you; I did, indeed, once think of beginning a large work without there in the square, eating my artichoke by the fountain at noon, and sleeping at night at the foot of my work. But one is effeminate and fears the weather, and cowardly, and afraid of the gossipping. Besides, I cannot do without the wine or--" "But if you had an opportunity of working in marble without any discomfort to yourself," interrupted Theodore. The sick man started up excitedly. "Do you know what you are doing with your thoughtless questions?" he cried, and his eyes sparkled. "Look in that corner; there have I cast one on the top of the other, all that used to come to me with such questions. The dust is burying these impertinent babblers day by day, and my eyes know already that it is an unpardonable sin for them to wander towards them. And yet I was fool enough to allow myself to hope again when they said that models were to be sent in for the monument to the last Pope. For a couple of weeks I thought and dreamt of nothing else, and worked it out with energy, and was myself satisfied with my work. Fool that I was, to be deluded by such fancies. That was yesterday. I wrapped the model in a cloth, and bore it myself all the way to the Cardinal Secretary of State,--for my soul hung upon it, and I thought another might let it fall. And then I was obliged to give the rascally servants civil words and my last scudo before they would even permit me to enter. Inside it was all black and red and violet, with their reverences' stockings, and they stared at me from head to foot, because I had run out of my studio without thinking of taking off my old working-jacket. I thought, 'Let them stare;' took courage, and stepped with a bow and my work before his eminence. I saw at once that he was in a bad temper, and that his neighbour had already tasted some of its effects. I told him shortly why I was there, and begged to be permitted to show my sketch. The old fellow nodded, after his custom, cast a glance over the figures, which looked doubly noble amongst all those rogues, and said, 'Not bad. But 'twont do, 'twont do; wants noblesse, my son, and more direct reference to the holy church. Take it