From that moment Chiaro set a watch on his soul, and put his hand to no other works but only to such as had for their end the presentment of some moral greatness that should impress the beholder:  and, in doing this, he did not choose for his medium the action and passion of human life, but cold symbolism and abstract impersonation.  So the people ceased to throng about his pictures as heretofore; and, when they were carried through town and town to their destination, they were no longer delayed by the crowds eager to gaze and admire:  and no prayers or offerings were brought to them on their path, as to his Madonnas, and his Saints, and his Holy Children.  Only the critical audience remained to him; and these, in default of more worthy matter, would have turned their scrutiny on a puppet or a mantle.  Meanwhile, he had no more of fever upon him; but was calm and pale each day in all that he did and in his goings in and out.  The works he produced at this time have perished—­in all likelihood, not unjustly.  It is said (and we may easily believe it), that, though more labored than his former pictures, they were cold and unemphatic; bearing marked out upon them, as they must certainly have done, the measure of that boundary to which they were made to conform.

And the weight was still close at Chiaro’s heart:  but he held in his breath, never resting (for he was afraid), and would not know it.

Now it happened, within these days, that there fell a great feast in Pisa, for holy matters:  and each man left his occupation; and all the guilds and companies of the city were got together for games and rejoicings.  And there were scarcely any that stayed in the houses, except ladies who lay or sat along their balconies between open windows which let the breeze beat through the rooms and over the spread tables from end to end.  And the golden cloths that their arms lay upon drew all eyes upward to see their beauty; and the day was long; and every hour of the day was bright with the sun.

So Chiaro’s model, when he awoke that morning on the hot pavement of the Piazza Nunziata, and saw the hurry of people that passed him, got up and went along with them; and Chiaro waited for him in vain.

For the whole of that morning, the music was in Chiaro’s room from the Church close at hand:  and he could hear the sounds that the crowd made in the streets; hushed only at long intervals while the processions for the feast-day chanted in going under his windows.  Also, more than once, there was a high clamour from the meeting of factious persons:  for the ladies of both leagues were looking down; and he who encountered his enemy could not choose but draw upon him.  Chiaro waited a long time idle; and then knew that his model was gone elsewhere.  When at his work, he was blind and deaf to all else; but he feared sloth:  for then his stealthy thoughts would begin, as it were, to beat round and round him, seeking a point for attack.  He now rose, therefore, and went to the window.  It was within a short space of noon; and underneath him a throng of people was coming out through the porch of San Rocco.