“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.