ALL Armando knew of sculpture he had learned from his uncle Daniello, a mountain craftsman who never chiselled anything greater than a ten-inch Saint Peter. At night in the tavern on the craggy height, with a flask of _barbera_ before him, the old carver would talk grandly of his doings in art, while his comrades, patient of the oft-told tale, nodded their heads in listless but loyal accord. They all knew very well that it was young Armando who did most of the carving, yet they cried “Bravo!” for old Daniello’s wine was good. And so it had been for a long time. While the lad chipped all day in a little workshop perched beyond the nether cloud shadows, his uncle passed the hours in Genoa, where, by sharp wits and bland tongue, he transmuted the marble into silver. But Armando had a soul that looked far above the gleaming tonsures of ten-inch Saint Peters. Wherefore he was unhappy. When his twentieth birthday dawned it seemed to him that his life had been a failure. One morning, after a night of much _barbera_ and noisy gasconade, old Daniello did not wake up, and two days afterward they laid him to rest in the sloping graveyard in the gorge by the olive-oil mill. Gloomily Armando weighed the situation, standing by the mullioned window of the room wherein he had toiled so long and ignobly. Far in the western distance he could see the ships that seemed to glide with full sails across the mountains. The serene midsummer vapours, pendulous above the Mediterranean, were visible, but the sea upon which their shadows fell and lingered was hidden from his view by a thicket of silver firs. Southward the trees stood lower, and over their tops, where tired sea gulls circled, he gazed sadly toward the jumble of masonry that is Genoa. Miles below in the sun glare the city lay this morning as Heine found it decades ago, like the bleached skeleton of some thrown-up monster of the deep. And a monster it was in the sight of the poor lad who looked down from the heights of Cardinali--but a monster that he would conquer, even as Saint George, champion of Genoa, had conquered the dragon in ages far agone. Yes, he would strike off for evermore the chains that fettered him to ten-inch Saint Peters, and mount to the white peaks of art! In the Apennine hamlet he had lived all his days, and never heard of Balzac; but he clinched his fist, and, with eyes set upon the cluster of chimney pots at the mountain’s foot, made his vow: “In this room, O Genoa! will I bring forth a marble that shall make you do me honour.”