The next morning was midsummer day.  Now, the pottery was all to be placed on this forenoon in the bottega of Signor Benedetto; and the Duke Guidobaldo was then to come and make his choice from amidst them; and the master-potter, a little because he was a courtier, and more because he liked to affect a mighty indifference and to show he had no favoritism, had declared that he would not himself see the competing works of art until the eyes of the Lord of Montefeltro also fell upon them.

As for Pacifica, she had locked herself in her chamber, alone with her intense agitation.  The young men were swaggering about, and taunting each other, and boasting.  Luca alone sat apart, thrumming an old lute.  Giovanni Sanzio, who had ridden home at evening from Citta di Castello, came in from his own house and put his hand on the youth’s shoulder.

“I hear the Pesaro men have brought fine things.  Take courage, my lad.  Maybe we can entreat the duke to dissuade Pacifica’s father from this tyrannous disposal of her hand.”

Luca shook his head wearily.

There would be one beautiful thing there, indeed, he knew; but what use would that be to him?

“The child—­the child—­” he stammered, and then remembered that he must not disclose Raffaelle’s secret.

“My child?” said Signor Giovanni.  “Oh, he will be here; he will be sure to be here:  wherever there is a painted thing to be seen, there always, be sure, is Raffaelle.”

Then the good man sauntered within from the loggia, to exchange salutations with Ser Benedetto, who, in a suit of fine crimson with doublet of sad-colored velvet, was standing ready to advance bareheaded into the street as soon as the hoofs of the duke’s charger should strike on the stones.

“You must be anxious in your thoughts,” said Signor Giovanni to him.  “They say a youth from Pesaro brings something fine:  if you should find yourself bound to take a stranger into your workroom and your home—­”

“If he be a man of genius, he will be welcome,” answered Messer Ronconi, pompously.  “Be he of Pesaro, or of Fano, or of Castel Durante, I go not back from my word:  I keep my word, to my own hindrance even, ever.”

“Let us hope it will bring you only joy and triumph here,” said his neighbor, who knew him to be an honest man and a true, if over-obstinate and too vain of his own place in Urbino.

“Our lord the duke!” shouted the people standing in the street; and Ser Benedetto walked out with stately tread to receive the honor of his master’s visit to his bottega.

Raffaelle slipped noiselessly up to his father’s side, and slid his little hand into Sanzio’s.

“You are not surely afraid of our good Guidobaldo!” said his father, with a laugh and some little surprise, for Raffaelle was very pale, and his lower lip trembled a little.

“No,” said the child, simply.