The scene he had successfully perfected, represented two applicants for justice, standing before the Pope of Rome.  They were priests, and had come before him for his judgment in the matter of contention between them.  They were ushered into the presence of the pope by a high official, and to this usher had Carlton given the features of the duke’s chamberlain.  It was a superb design, and represented a late occurrence well-known to the people of Florence, and for this reason, aside from that of its acknowledged superiority, possessed peculiar interest at that time.

The deep, yet natural expression of feeling depicted in each countenance, the perfect harmony of the general conception and its completeness of finish, rendered the picture a study requiring time to comprehend and appreciate all its many excellences.  It was finished, and the work of half a year, pursued with the utmost assiduity in secret, had proved successful.  All his pains and self-denials were now forgotten; he was doubly paid for all his sufferings-he even looked back upon them with a conscientious pride, and deemed that he had bought his preferment cheaply.

And such is ever the fate of true genius; it rarely receives the aid of fortune in gaining fame, but struggles on, dependent upon its own slow but sure preferment.  This is self-evident; for genius may remain ever latent, unless brought out and improved by stem necessity.

CHAPTER VI.

The masquerade ball.

Prosperity’s the very bond of love.

-Winter’s Tale.

What a perfect chequer-board is this same game of life on which we all hold so transient a lease.  Time is the board, and the various vicissitudes of life make up the chequered field, ourselves the wooden “men;” each and all strive for preferment, and whether it be gained or not, depends solely upon the shrewdness of him who plays the game.  The “king-row” may designate the pinnacle of earthly wishes and hopes, while the various “moves” may show the struggle for that desirable goal-happiness.  Ah! how many of us get “penned” and “cornered”—­and many too, in their headlong course, are “jumped,” and taken off the scene of action.  Truly, there is a vast similitude between this game of chequers and the bolder one of life.

Here was poor Carlton but lately struggling along the chequered field, now moving literally towards the king-row.  In a few subsequent weeks, with a well-filled purse, he was enjoying life and his art like a true gentleman, and was the envy of every artist in Florence; and yet they all strove to do him honor, at least; so it appeared, orders for his productions crowded upon him from all the nobility, not only of Florence, but of all Tuscany.  The private palaces of the environs of the city were thought incomplete in their collections, unless supplied with one at least of his pictures, the patronage of the Grand Duke, and his own work, which occupied the favored place in the Pitti Palace, having raised him to the pinnacle of fame as an artist.