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Business was looking up with Grandfather Fortuny and Mariano.  All the images they made were quickly taken.  People said they liked the way the cheeks and noses of the Apostles were colored; and when Father Gonzales brought in a sailor who had been shipwrecked, and the sailorman left ten pesetas for a plaster-of-Paris ship to be placed as a votive offering in the Chapel of Saint Dominic, their cup was full.

Mariano made the ship himself, and painted it, adding the yellow pennant of Spain to the mainmast.

This piece of work caused a quarrel between Grandfather Fortuny and Father Gonzales.  The priest declared that a boy like that shouldn’t waste his youth in the shabby, tumble-down village of Reus—­he should go to Barcelona and receive instruction in art.

The grandfather cried and protested that the boy was all he had to love in the wide world; he himself was growing feeble, and without the lad’s help at the business nothing could be done—­starvation would be the end.

Besides, it would take much money to send Mariano to the Academy—­it would take all their savings, and more!  Do not inflate the child with foolish notions of making a fortune and winning fame!  The world is cruel, men are unkind, and the strife of trying to win leads only to disappointment and vain regret at the last.  Did not the artist Salvio commit suicide?  Mariano had now a trade—­who in Reus could make an image of the Virgin and color it in green, red and yellow so it would sell on sight for two pesetas?

Father Gonzales smiled and said something about images at two pesetas each as compared with the work of Murillo and Velasquez.  He laughed at the old man’s fears of starvation, and defied him to name a single case where any one had ever starved.  And as for expenses, why, he had thought it all out:  he would pay Mariano’s expenses himself!

“Should we two old men, about ready to die, stand in the way of the success of that boy?” exclaimed the priest.  “Why, he will be an artist yet, do you hear?—­an artist!”

They compromised on the Grammar-School, with three lessons a week by a drawing-master.

Grandfather Fortuny did not starve.  Mariano was a regular steam-engine for work.  He made more images evenings, and better ones, than they had ever made before during the day.

Finally Father Gonzales’ wishes prevailed and Mariano was sent to the Academy at Barcelona.  Out of his own scanty income the old priest set aside a sum equal to eight dollars a month for Mariano; and when the grandfather’s sight grew too feeble for him to work at his trade he moved over to the rectory.

For a year, Father Gonzales sent the eight dollars on the first of each month.  And then there came to him a brusk notification from Claudio Lorenzale, the Director of the Academy, to the effect that certain sums had been provided by the City of Barcelona to pay the expenses of four of the most worthy pupils at the Academy, and Mariano Fortuny had been voted as one who should receive the benefit of the endowment.