"And can I climb up to the ceiling," said the man with the candles, "if my ladders are taken away to lay carpets? Do you take my men for bats, do you want me to make thirty honest fellows break their necks?" "How do you expect my men to lay their carpets," said the chief upholsterer, in his turn, "if the painters don't take away their ladders?" "And how do you expect our ladders to be taken away if we are still on them?" shouted one of the painters. "The fault is all yours, you daubers!" cried the frantic majordomo; "or, rather, your master is the only culprit," he added, noticing that the young man whom he addressed glared fiercely at him at the epithet of dauber. "It's that old madman of a Pier-Angelo, who is not even here to direct you, I'll wager. Where can he be? At the nearest wineshop, I'll stake my head!" A voice, still full and resonant, broke forth at the highest point of the ceiling with the refrain of an old ballad, and, on looking up, the wrathful majordomo saw the glistening bald head of the decorator-in-chief. Evidently the old man was laughing at the majordomo, and, being master of the field, proposed to put the finishing touches to his work at his leisure. "Pier-Angelo, my friend," said the other, "you are making sport of us! That is too bad of you. You act like an old spoiled child, as you are; but we shall lose patience at last. This is no time to laugh and sing your drinking-songs." Pier-Angelo did not deign to reply; he simply shrugged his shoulders as he talked with his son, who was even higher up than he, shading the dress of a dancing-girl of Herculaneum, who swam in a blue canvas sky. "There are enough figures, enough folds and shading!" cried the majordomo, beside himself. "Who in the devil will ever look up there, to see if there's anything wrong with your divinities in the firmament? The general effect is there, and that's all that is necessary. Come, come down, you old fox, or I'll shake the ladder you are standing on." "If you touch my father's ladder," exclaimed young Michel, in a voice of thunder, "I will crush you with this chandelier. No jests of that sort, Signor Barbagallo, or you will be sorry for them." "Let him talk, and go on with your work," said old Pier-Angelo, calmly. "Disputing takes time; don't waste your breath in empty words." "Go down, father, go down," said the young man. "I am afraid that in this confusion they may give you a fall; I shall finish in a moment. Go down, I entreat you, if you expect me to retain my presence of mind." Pier-Angelo descended the ladder slowly; not that he had lost, at sixty years of age, the strength and agility of youth, but in order to make the time that his son required to complete his work seem less long.