Pier-Angelo was one of the most rapid and ingenious of these decorators--_adornatori_. He was a native of Catania, and had reared his family there until the period of Michel's birth, when he abruptly left his province and settled in Rome. The reason he assigned for this voluntary exile was that his family was increasing in size, that there was too much competition in Catania, and that consequently his work no longer sufficed for his needs; wherefore he proposed to seek his fortune elsewhere. But people said under their breath that he had fled from the resentment of certain all-powerful patricians who were devoted to the court of Naples. Everyone knows the bitter hatred of that conquered and down-trodden people for the government on the other side of the strait. The Sicilian, proud and revengeful, rumbles incessantly like his volcano, and sometimes erupts. It was whispered that Pier-Angelo had been involved in an attempt at a popular uprising, and that he had been obliged to fly, carrying with him his brushes and his household goods. To be sure, his social and kindly temperament seemed to contradict such a supposition; but the lively imaginations of the good people of the suburb of Catania must needs devise an extraordinary motive for the disappearance of one so loved and regretted by all his confrères. At Rome he was hardly more fortunate, for he had the sorrow of losing all his children there except Michel; and ere long his wife died in giving birth to a daughter, whose young brother was her godfather, and who received the name of Mila, a contraction of Michelangela. Having lost these two children, Pier-Angelo, albeit more melancholy, was much more at ease financially, and by dint of earnest work, he succeeded in giving his son an education far superior to that which he had himself received. He displayed a predilection for that boy which almost amounted to weakness, and Michel, although poor and obscure, was a veritable spoiled child. Now, Pier-Angelo had spurred on his other sons to work, and had imparted to them early in life the ardor which was consuming him. But, whether because they had succumbed to excessive toil for which they had not received from Heaven the same aptitude and strength as their father, or because Pier-Angelo, finding his family reduced to three persons, no longer deemed it necessary to have assistance, it is certain that he seemed more anxious to handle tenderly the health of his last remaining son, than to provide him betimes with a means of livelihood. Nevertheless, the child loved painting, and in play produced fruit, flowers, and birds, in which the coloring was exquisite. One day he asked his father why he never introduced figures in his frescoes.