“Let me try!” said the child a hundred times.  He would tell no one, only Luca would know; and if he failed—­well, there would only be the spoiled pottery to pay for, and had he not two whole ducats that the duke had given him when the court had come to behold his father’s designs for the altar frescos at San Dominico di Cagli?

So utterly in earnest was he, and so intense and blank was Luca’s absolute despair, that the young man had in turn given way to his entreaties.  “Never can I do aught,” he thought, bitterly, looking at his own clumsy designs, “And sometimes by the help of cherubs the saints work miracles,”

“It will be no miracle,” said Raffaelle, hearing him murmur this; “it will be myself, and that which the dear God has put into me.”

From that hour Luca let him do what he would, and through all these lovely early summer days the child came and shut himself up in the garret, and studied, and thought, and worked, and knitted his pretty fair brows, and smiled in tranquil satisfaction, according to the mood he was in and the progress of his labors.

Giovanni Sanzio went away at that time to paint an altar-piece over at Citta di Castello, and his little son for once was glad he was absent.  Messer Giovanni would surely have remarked the long and frequent visits of Raffaelle to the attic, and would, in all likelihood, have obliged him to pore over his Latin or to take exercise in the open fields; but his mother said nothing, content that he should be amused and safe, and knowing well that Pacifica loved him and would let him come to no harm under her roof.  Pacifica herself did wonder that he deserted her so perpetually for the garret.  But one day when she questioned him the sweet-faced rogue clung to her and murmured, “Oh, Pacifica, I do want Luca to win you, because he loves you so; and I do love you both!” And she grew pale, and answered him, “Ah, dear, if he could!” and then said never a word more, but went to her distaff; and Raffaelle saw great tears fall off her lashes down among the flax.

She thought he went to the attic to watch how Luca painted, and loved him more than ever for that, but knew in the hopelessness of her heart—­as Luca also knew it in his—­that the good and gallant youth would never be able to create anything that would go as the duke’s gifts to the Gonzaga of Mantua.  And she did care for Luca!  She had spoken to him but rarely indeed, yet passing in and out of the same doors, and going to the same church offices, and dwelling always beneath the same roof, he had found means of late for a word, a flower, a serenade.  And he was so handsome and so brave, and so gentle, too, and so full of deference.  Poor Pacifica cared not in the least whether he could paint or not.  He could have made her happy.