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THE CHILD OF URBINO 
 
 AND 
 
 MOUFFLOU 
 

 
"HE WAS ONLY SEVEN YEARS OLD, BIT HE LABOURED AS 
 EARNESTLY AS IF HE WERE A MAN GROWN." 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO 
 
 AND 
 
 MOUFFLOU 
 
 BY 
 
 "OUIDA" 
 
 lUustrateti bg 
 ETHELDRED B. BARRY 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 DANA ESTES & COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, igoo 
 By Dana Estes & Company 
 
 Colonial press 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
 Boston, U. S. A. 
 
53^ 
 
 D 
 
 cJL 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " He was only seven years old, but he laboured as 
 
 EARNESTLY AS IF HE WERE A MAN GROWN " Frontispiece 
 
 Raffaelle and Pacifica in THE Garden . . 29 
 
 "'I PAINTED IT,' HE SAID, WITH A PLEASED SMILE. 
 
 'I, Raffaelle'" 41 
 
 In Front of the Church 53 
 
 "He gathered Moufflou up against his breast 
 
 AND cried as if HE WOULD NEVER STOP CRYING " 61 
 
 « Fleet as the wind Moufflou dashed through 
 
 THE room" 75 
 
 ivi54S740 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO, 
 
 IT was in the year of grace 1490, in the reign of 
 Guidobaldo, Lord of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, 
 — the year, by the way, of the birth of that most 
 illustrious and gracious lady Yittoria Colonna. 
 
 It was in the spring of the year, in that mountain- 
 eyrie beloved of the Muses and coveted of the Borgia, 
 that a little boy stood looking out of a grated case- 
 ment into the calm sunshiny day. He was a pretty 
 boy, with hazel eyes, and fair hair cut straight above 
 his brows ; he wore a little blue tunic with some em- 
 broidery about the throat of it, and had in his hand 
 a little round flat cap of the same colour. He was 
 sad of heart this merry morning, for a dear friend of 
 his, a friend ten years older than himself, had gone 
 the night before on a journey over the mountains to 
 Maestro Francesco at Bologna, there to be bound ap- 
 prentice to that gentle artist. This friend, Timoteo 
 della Yita, had been very dear to the child, had played 
 with him and jested with him, made him toys and 
 told him stories, and he was very full of pain at Ti- 
 moteo's loss. Yet he told himself not to mind, for had 
 not Timoteo said to him, " I go as goldsmith's 'pren- 
 
 11 
 
12 THE CHILD OF UBBINO. 
 
 tice to the best of men; but I mean to become a 
 painter " ? And the child understood that to be a 
 painter was to be the greatest and wisest the world 
 held ; he quite understood that, for he was Raffaelle, 
 the seven-jear-old son of Signer Giovanni Sanzio. 
 
 He was a very happy little boy here in this stately 
 yet homely and kindly Urbino, where his people had 
 come for refuge when the lances of Malatesta had 
 ravaged and ruined their homestead. He had the 
 dearest old grandfather in all the world ; he had a 
 loving mother, and he had a father who was very ten- 
 der to him, and painted him among the angels of 
 heaven, and was always full of pleasant conceits and 
 admirable learning, and such true love of art that the 
 child breathed it with every breath, as he could breathe 
 the sweetness of a cowslip-bell when he held one in 
 his hand up to his nostrils. 
 
 It was good in those days to live in old Urbino. It 
 was not, indeed, so brilliant a place as it became in a 
 later day, when Ariosto came there, and Bembo and 
 Castiglione and many another witty and learned gentle- 
 man, and the Courts of Love were held with ingenious 
 rhyme and pretty sentiment, sad only for wantonness. 
 But, if not so brilliant, it was homelier, simpler, full 
 of virtue, with a wise peace and tranquillity that 
 joined hands with a stout courage. The burgher was 
 good friends with his prince, and knew that in any 
 trouble or perplexity he could go up to the palace, or 
 stop the duke in the market-place, and be sure of 
 sympathy and good counsel. There were a genuine 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 13 
 
 love of beautiful things, a sense of public duty and of 
 public spirit, a loyal temper and a sage contentment, 
 among the good people of that time, which made them 
 happy and prosperous. 
 
 All work was solidly and thoroughly done, living 
 was cheap, and food good and plentiful, much better 
 and more plentiful than it is now ; in the fine old 
 houses every stone was sound, every bit of ornament 
 well wrought, men made their nests to live in and to 
 pass to their children and children's children after 
 them, and had their own fancies and their own tradi- 
 tions recorded in the iron-work of their casements and 
 in the wood-work of their doors. They had their 
 happy day of honest toil from matins bell to even-song, 
 and then walked out or sat about in the calm evening 
 air, and looked down on the plains below that were 
 rich with grain, and fruit, and woodland, and talked 
 and laughed among each other, and were content with 
 their own pleasant, useful lives, not burnt up with 
 envy of desire to be some one else, as in our sickly, 
 hurrying time most people are. 
 
 Yes, life must have been very good in those old 
 days in old Urbino, better than it is anywhere in 
 ours. 
 
 Can you not picture to yourself good, shrewd, wise 
 Giovanni Sanzio, with his old father by his side, and 
 his little son running before him, in the holy evening 
 time of a feast-day, with the deep church-bells swaying 
 above-head, and the last sun-rays smiting the frescoed 
 walls, the stone bastions, the blazoned standard on the 
 
14 THE CHILD OF UBBINO. 
 
 castle roof, the steep city rocks shelving down into the 
 greenery of cherry-orchard and of pear-tree ? I can, 
 whenever I shut my eyes and recall Urbino as it 
 was; and would it had been mine to live then in 
 that mountain-home, and meet that divine child 
 going along his happy, smiling way, garnering un- 
 consciously in his infant soul all the beautiful sights 
 and sounds around him, to give them in his manhood 
 to the world. 
 
 " Let him alone : he will paint all this some day," 
 said his wise father, who loved to think that his 
 brushes and his colours would pass in time to Raffa- 
 elle, whose hands would be stronger to hold them 
 than his own had been. And, whether he would ever 
 paint it or not, the child never tired of thus looking 
 from his eyrie on the rocks and counting all that 
 passed below through the blowing corn under the leafy 
 orchard boughs. 
 
 There were so many things to see in Urbino in that 
 time, looking so over the vast green valley below : a 
 clump of spears, most likely, as men-at-arms rode 
 through the trees ; a string of market-folk bringing 
 in the produce of the orchards or the fields ; perchance 
 a red-robed cardinal on a white mule with glittering 
 housings, behind him a sumpter-train rich with bag- 
 gage, furniture, gold and silver plate ; maybe the 
 duke's hunting-party going out or coming homeward 
 with caracoling steeds, beautiful hounds straining at 
 their leash, hunting-horns sounding merrily over the 
 green country ; maybe a band of free lances, with 
 
THE GUILD OF URBINO. 15 
 
 plumes tossing, steel glancing, bannerets fluttering 
 against the sky ; or maybe a quiet gray -robed string 
 of monks or pilgrims singing the hymn sung before 
 Jerusalem, treading the long lush grass with sandalled 
 feet, coming toward the city, to crowd slowly and 
 gladly up its rocky height. Do you not wish with 
 me you could stand in the window with Raffaelle to 
 see the earth as it was then ? 
 
 No doubt the good folks of Urbino laughed at him 
 often for a little moonstruck dreamer, so many hours 
 did he stand looking, looking, — only looking, — as 
 eyes have a right to do that see well and not altogether 
 as others see. 
 
 Happily for him, the days of his childhood were 
 times of peace, and he did not behold, as his father 
 had done, the torches light up the street and the 
 flames devour the homesteads. 
 
 At this time Urbino was growing into fame for 
 its pottery-work: those big dishes and bowls, those 
 marriage-plates and pharmacy-jars, which it made, 
 were beginning to rival the products of its neighbour 
 Gubbio, and when its duke wished to send a bridal 
 gift, or a present on other festal occasions, he oftenest 
 chose some service or some rare platter of his own 
 Urbino ware. Now, pottery had not then taken the 
 high place among the arts of Italy that it was destined 
 very soon to do. As you will learn when you are 
 older, after the Greeks and the Christians had ex- 
 hausted all that was beautiful in shape and substance 
 of clay vases, the art seemed to die out, and the 
 
16 THE CHILD OF UBBINO. 
 
 potters and the pottery-painters died with it, or at 
 any rate went to sleep for a great many centuries, 
 whilst soldiers and prelates, nobles and mercenaries, 
 were trampling to and fro all over the land and 
 disputing it, and carrying fire and torch, steel and 
 desolation, with them in their quarrels and covetous- 
 ness. But now, the reign of the late good duke, great 
 Federigo, having been favourable to the Marches (as 
 we call his province now), the potters and pottery- 
 painters, with other gentle craftsmen, had begun to 
 look up again, and the beneficent fires of their humble 
 ovens had begun to burn in Castel Durante, in Pesaro, 
 in Faenza, in Gubbio, and in Urbino itself. The great 
 days had not yet come : Maestro Giorgio was but a 
 youngster, and Orazio Fontane not born, nor the 
 clever baker Prestino either, nor the famous Fra 
 Xanto ; but there was a Don Giorgio even then in 
 Gubbio, of whose work, alas ! one plate now at the 
 Louvre is all we have ; and here in the ducal city on 
 the hill rich and noble things were already being 
 made in the stout and lustrous majolica that was 
 destined to acquire later on so wide a ceramic 
 fame. Jars and bowls and platters, oval dishes, and 
 ewers and basins, and big-bodied, metal-welded phar- 
 macy-vases were all made and painted at Urbino 
 whilst Raffaelle Sanzio was running about on rosy 
 infantine feet. There was a master-potter of the 
 Montefeltro at that time, one Maestro Benedetto 
 Ronconi, whose name had not become world-renowned 
 as Orazio Fontane's and Maestro Giorgio's did in the 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 17 
 
 following century, yet who in that day enjoyed the 
 honour of all the duchy, and did things very rare and 
 fine in the Urbino ware. He lived within a stone's 
 throw of Giovanni Sanzio, and was a gray-haired, 
 handsome, somewhat stern and pompous man, now 
 more than middle-aged, who had one beauteous 
 daughter, by name Pacifica. He cherished Pacifica 
 well, but not so well as he cherished the things he 
 wrought, — the deep round nuptial plates and oval 
 massive dishes that he painted with Scriptural stories 
 and strange devices, and landscapes such as those he 
 saw around, and flowing scrolls with Latin mottoes 
 in black letters, and which, when thus painted, he 
 consigned with an anxiously beating heart to the trial 
 of the ovens, and which sometimes came forth from 
 the trial all cracked and blurred and marred, and 
 sometimes emerged in triumph and came into his 
 trembling hands iridescent and lovely with those 
 lustrous and opaline hues which we admire in them 
 to this day as the especial glory of majolica. 
 
 Maestro Benedetto was an ambitious and vain 
 man, and had had a hard, laborious manhood, work- 
 ing at his potter's wheel and painter's brush before 
 Urbino ware was prized in Italy or even in the duchy. 
 Now, indeed, he was esteemed at his due worth, and 
 his work was so also, and he was passably rich, and 
 known as a good artist beyond the Marches ; but there 
 was a younger man over at Gubbio, the Don Giorgio 
 who was precursor of unequalled Maestro Giorgio 
 Andreoli, who surpassed him, and made him sleep 
 
18 THE CHILD OF URBINO. 
 
 o' nights on thorns, as envy makes all those to do 
 who take her as their bedfellow. 
 
 The house of Maestro Benedetto was a long stone 
 building, with a loggia at the back all overclimbed 
 by hardy rose-trees, and looking on a garden that 
 was more than half an orchard, and in which grew 
 abundantly pear-trees, plum-trees, and wood straw- 
 berries. The lancet windows of his workshop looked 
 on all this quiet greenery. There were so many such 
 pleasant workshops then in the land, — calm, godly, 
 homelike places, filled from without with song of 
 birds, and scent of herbs and blossoms. Nowadays 
 men work in crowded, stinking cities, in close factory 
 chamber^ ; and their work is barren as their lives 
 are. 
 
 The little son of neighbour Sanzio ran in and out 
 this bigger, wider house and garden of Maestro 
 Benedetto at his pleasure, for the maiden Pacifica 
 was always glad to see him, and even the sombre 
 master-potter would unbend to him and show him 
 how to lay the colour on to the tremulous fugitive 
 unbaked biscuit. 
 
 Pacifica was a lovely young woman of some seven- 
 teen or eighteen summers ; and perhaps Raffaelle was 
 but remembering her when he painted in his after- 
 years the face of his Madonna di San Sisto. He 
 loved her as he loved everything that was beautiful 
 and every one who was kind ; and almost better than 
 his own beloved father's studio, almost better than 
 his dear old grandsire's cheerful little shop, did he 
 
THE CHILD OF UEBINO. 19 
 
 love this grave, silent, sweet-smelling, sun-pierced, 
 shadowy old house of Maestro Benedetto. 
 
 Maestro Benedetto had four apprentices or pupils 
 in that time learning to become figuli^ but the one 
 whom Raffaelle liked the most (and Pacifica too) 
 was one Luca Torelli, of a village above in the moun- 
 tains, — a youth with a noble, dark, pensive beauty of 
 his own', and a fearless gait, and a supple, tall, slender 
 figure that would have looked well in the light coat 
 of mail and silken doublet of a man-at-arms. In 
 sooth, the spirit of Messer Luca was more made for 
 war and its risks and glories than for the wheel and 
 the brush of the bottega; but he had loved Pacifica 
 ever since he had come down one careless holy day 
 into Urbino, and had bound himself to her father's 
 service in a heedless moment of eagerness to breathe 
 the same air and dwell under the same roof as she 
 did. He had gained little for his pains : to see her 
 at mass and at meal-times, now and then to be allowed 
 to bring water from the well for her or feed her 
 pigeons, to see her gray gown go down between the 
 orchard trees and catch the sunlight, to hear the hum 
 of her spinning-wheel, the thrum of her viol, — this 
 was the uttermost he got of joy in two long years ; 
 and how he envied Raffaelle running along the 
 stone floor of the loggia to leap into her arms, to 
 hang upon her skirts, to pick the summer fruit 
 with her, and sort with her the autumn herbs for 
 drying ! 
 
 " I love Pacifica ! " he would say, with a groan, to 
 
20 THE CHILD OF UBBINO. 
 
 Raffaelle ; and Raffaelle would say, with a smile, 
 " Ah, Luca, so do I ! " 
 
 " It is not the same thing, my dear," sighed Luca ; 
 " I want her for my wife." 
 
 " I shall have no wife ; I shall marry myself to 
 painting," said Raffaelle, with a little grave wise face 
 looking out from under the golden roof of his fair hair. 
 For he was never tired of watching his father painting 
 the saints with their branch of palm on their ground 
 of blue or of gold, or Maestro Benedetto making the 
 dull clay glow with angels' wings and prophets' robes 
 and holy legends told in colour. 
 
 Now, one day as Raffaelle was standing and look- 
 ing thus at his favourite window in the potter's house, 
 his friend, the handsome, black-browed Luca, who 
 was also standing there, did sigh so deeply and so 
 deplorably that the child was startled from his 
 dreams. 
 
 " Good Luca, what ails you ? " he murmured, wind- 
 ing his arms about the young man's knees. 
 
 " Oh, 'Faello ! " mourned the apprentice, woefully. 
 " Here is such a chance to win the hand of Pacifica if 
 only I had talent, — such talent as that Giorgio of 
 Gubbio has ! If the good Lord had only gifted me 
 with a master's skill, instead of all this bodily strength 
 and sinew, like a wild hog of the woods, which avails 
 me nothing here ! " 
 
 " What chance is it ? " asked Raffaelle, " and what 
 is there new about Pacifica ? She told me nothing, 
 and I was with her an hour." 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 21 
 
 " Pear simple one, she knows nothing of it," said 
 Luca, heaving another tremendous sigh from his 
 heart's deepest depths. " You must know that a new 
 order has come in this very forenoon from the duke ; 
 he wishes a dish and a jar of the very finest and firm- 
 est majolica to be painted with the story of Esther, and 
 made ready in three months from this date, to then go 
 as his gifts to his cousins of Gonzaga. He has ordered 
 that no cost be spared in the work, but that the paint- 
 ing thereof be of the best that can be produced, and 
 the prize he will give is fifty scudi. Now, Maestro 
 Benedetto, having known some time, it seems, of this 
 order, has had made in readiness several large oval 
 dishes and beautiful big-bellied jars : he gives one of 
 each to each of his pupils, — to myself, to Berengario, 
 to Tito, and Zenone. The master is sorely distraught 
 that his eyesight permits him not himself to execute 
 the duke's commands ; but it is no secret that should 
 one of us be so fortunate as to win the duke's appro- 
 bation, the painter who does so shall become his 
 partner here and shall have the hand of Pacifica. 
 Some say that he has only put forth this promise as a 
 stimulus to get the best work done of which his bot- 
 tega is capable ; but I know Maestro Benedetto too 
 well to deem him guilty of any such evasion. What 
 he has said he will carry out ; if the vase and the dish 
 win the duke's praise, they will also win Pacifica. 
 Now you see, 'Faello mine, why I am so bitterly sad 
 of heart, for I am a good craftsman enough at the 
 wheel and the furnace, and I like not ill the handling 
 
22 THE CHILD OF UEBINO. 
 
 and the moulding of the clay, but at the painting of 
 the clay I am but a tyro, and Berengario or even the 
 little Zenone will beat me ; of that I am sure." 
 
 Raffaelle heard all this in silence, leaning his elbows 
 on his friend's knee, and his chin on the palms of his 
 own hands. He knew that the other pupils were bet- 
 ter painters by far than his Luca, though not one of 
 them was such a good-hearted or noble-looking youth, 
 and for none of them did the maiden Pacifica care. 
 
 " How long a time is given for the jar and the dish 
 to be ready ? " he asked, at length. 
 
 " Three months, my dear," said Luca, with a sigh 
 sadder tha.n ever. " But if it were three years, what 
 difference would it make ? You cannot cudgel the 
 divine grace of art into a man with blows as you 
 cudgel speed into a mule, and I shall be a dolt at the 
 end of the time, as I am now. What said your good 
 father to me but yesternight ? — and he is good to me 
 and does not despise me. He said, ' Luca, my son, it 
 is of no more avail for you to sigh for Pacifica than 
 for the moon. Were she mine I would give her to 
 you, for you have a heart of gold, but Signor Bene- 
 detto will not ; for never, I fear me, will you be able 
 to decorate anything more than an apothecary's mortar 
 or a barber's basin. If I hurt you, take it not ill ; I 
 mean kindness, and were I a stalwart youth like you 
 I would go try my fortunes in the Free Companies in 
 France or Spain, or down in Rome, for you are made 
 for a soldier.' That was the best even your father 
 could say for me, 'Faello." 
 
THE CHILD OF UBBINO. 23 
 
 " But Pacifica," said the child, — " Pacifica would 
 not wish you to join the Free Companies ? " 
 
 " God knows," said Luca, hopelessly. " Perhaps 
 she would not care." 
 
 " I am sure she would," said Raffaelle, " for she 
 does love you, Luca, though she cannot say so, being 
 but a girl, and Signor Benedetto against you. But 
 that redcap you tamed for her, how she loves it, how 
 she caresses it, and half is for you, Luca, half for the 
 bird ! " 
 
 Luca kissed him. 
 
 But the tears rolled down the poor youth's face, 
 for he was much in earnest and filled with despair. 
 
 " Even if she did, if she do," he murmured, hope- 
 lessly, " she never will let me know it, since her father 
 forbids a thought of me ; and now here is this trial of 
 skill at the duke's order come to make things worse, 
 and if that swaggering Berengario of Fano win her, 
 then truly will I join the free lances and pray heaven 
 send me swift shrive and shroud." 
 
 Raffaelle was very pensive for awhile ; then he 
 raised his head and said : 
 
 " I have thought of something, Luca. But I do not 
 know whether you will let me try it." 
 
 "You angel child! What would your old Luca 
 deny to you ? But as for helping me, my dear, put 
 that thought out of your little mind for ever, for no 
 one can help me, 'Faello, not the saints themselves, 
 since I was born a dolt ! " 
 
 Raffaelle kissed him, and said, " Now listen ! " 
 
24 THE CHILD OF UEBINO. 
 
 A few days later Signer Benedetto informed his 
 pupils in ceremonious audience of the duke's command, 
 and of his own intentions ; he did not pronounce his 
 daughter's name to the youths, but he spoke in terms 
 that were clear enough to assure them that whoever 
 had the good fortune and high merit to gain the duke's 
 choice of his pottery should have the honour of be- 
 coming associate in his own famous bottega. Now, it 
 had been known in Urbino ever since Pacifica had 
 gone to her first communion that whoever pleased her 
 father well enough to become his partner would have 
 also to please her as her husband. Not much atten- 
 tion was given to maidens' wishes in those times, and 
 no one thought the master-potter either unjust or cruel 
 in thus suiting himself before he suited his daughter. 
 And what made the hearts of all the young men quake 
 and sink the lowest was the fact that Signer Benedetto 
 offered the competition not only to his own appren- 
 tices but to any native of the duchy of Urbino. For 
 who could tell what hero might not step forth from 
 obscurity and gain the great prize of this fair hand of 
 Pacifica's ? And with her hand would go many a 
 broad gold ducat, and heritage of the wide old gray 
 stone house, and many an old jewel and old brocade 
 that were kept there in dusky sweet-smelling cabinets, 
 and also more than one good piece of land, smiling 
 with corn and fruit-trees, outside the gates in the lower 
 pastures to the westward. 
 
 Luca, indeed, never thought of these things, but the 
 other three pupils did, and other youths as well. Had 
 
THE CHILD OF UBBINO, 25 
 
 it not been for the limitation as to birth within the 
 duchy, many a gallant young painter from the other 
 side of the Apennines, many a lusty vasalino or hocca- 
 lino from the workshops of fair Florence herself, or 
 from the Lombard cities, might have travelled there 
 in hot haste as fast as horses could carry them, and 
 come to paint the clay for the sake of so precious a 
 recompense. But Urbino men they had to be ; and 
 poor Luca, who was so full of despair that he could 
 almost have thrown himself headlong from the rocks, 
 was thankful to destiny for even so much slender 
 mercy as this, — that the number of his rivals was 
 limited. 
 
 " Had I been you," Giovanni Sanzio ventured once 
 to say respectfully to Signer Benedetto, "I think I 
 should have picked out for my son-in-law the best 
 youth that I knew, not the best painter ; for be it said 
 in all reverence, my friend, the greatest artist is not 
 always the truest man, and by the hearthstone humble 
 virtues have sometimes high claim." 
 
 Then Signer Benedetto had set his stern face like a 
 flint, knowing very well what youth Messer Giovanni 
 would have liked to name to him. 
 
 " I have need of a good artist in my bottega to keep 
 up its fame," he had said, stiffly. " My vision is not 
 what it was, and I should be loath to see Urbino ware 
 fall back, whilst Pesaro and Gubbio and Castel Durante 
 gain ground every day. Pacifica must pay the penalty, 
 if penalty there be, for being the daughter of a great 
 artist." 
 
26 THE CHILD OF UBBINO, 
 
 Mirthful, keen-witted Sanzio smiled to himself, and 
 went his way in silence ; for he who loved Andrea 
 Mantegna did not bow down in homage before the 
 old master-potter's estimation of himself, which was 
 in truth somewhat overweening in its vanity. 
 
 " Poor Pacifica ! " he thought : " if only my 'Faello 
 were but some decade older ! " 
 
 He, who could not foresee the future, the splendid, 
 wondrous, unequalled future that awaited his young 
 son, wished nothing better for him than a peaceful 
 painter's life here in old Urbino, under the friendly 
 shadow of the Montefeltro's palace walls. 
 
 Meanwhile, where think you was Raffaelle ? Half 
 the day, or all the day, and every day, whenever he 
 could ? Where think you was he ? Well, in the attic 
 of Luca, before a bowl and a dish almost as big as 
 himself. The attic was a breezy, naked place, under- 
 neath the arches supporting the roof of Maestro Bene- 
 detto's dwelling. Each pupil had one of these garrets 
 to himself, — a rare boon, for which Luca came to be 
 very thankful, for without it he could not have shel- 
 tered his angel ; and the secret that Raffaelle had 
 whispered to him that day of the first conference had 
 been, " Let me try and paint it! " 
 
 For a long time Luca had been afraid to comply, 
 had only forborne indeed from utter laughter at the 
 idea from his love and reverence for the little speaker. 
 Baby Sanzio, who was only just seven years old as the 
 April tulips reddened the corn, painting a majolica 
 dish and vase to go to the Gonzaga of Mantua ! The 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 27 
 
 good fellow could scarcely restrain his shouts of mirth 
 at the audacious fancy; and nothing had kept him 
 grave but the sight of that most serious face of Raffa- 
 elle, looking up to his with serene, sublime self-confi- 
 dence, nay, perhaps, rather, confidence in heaven and 
 in heaven's gifts. 
 
 " 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 
 frescoes 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 some- 
 times by the help of cherubs the saints work 
 miracleSo" 
 
 " 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 labours. 
 
28 THE CniLD OF UEBINO. 
 
 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 like- 
 lihood 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 mur- 
 mured, "' 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 
 
RAFFAELLE AND PACIFICA IK THE GARDEN. 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 31 
 
 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. 
 
 In the attic Raffaelle passed the most anxious hours 
 of all his sunny little life. He would not allow Luca 
 even to look at what he did. He barred the door and 
 worked ; when he went away he locked his work up 
 in a wardrobe. The swallows came in and out of the 
 unglazed window, and fluttered all around him ; the 
 morning sunbeams came in, too, and made a nimbus 
 around his golden head, like that which his father 
 gilded above the heads of saints. Raffaelle worked 
 on, not looking off, though clang of trumpet, or 
 fanfare of cymbal, often told him there was much 
 going on worth looking at down below. He was 
 only seven years old, but he laboured as earnestly as 
 if he were a man grown, his little rosy fingers gripping 
 that pencil which was to make him in life and death 
 famous as kings are not famous, and let his tender 
 body lie in its last sleep in the Pantheon of Rome. 
 
 He had covered hundreds of sheets with designs be- 
 fore he had succeeded in getting embodied the ideas 
 that haunted him. When he had pleased himself at 
 last, he set to work to transfer his imaginations to the 
 clay in colour, in the subtile luminous metallic enamel 
 that characterises Urbino majolica. 
 
 Ah, how glad he was now that his father had let 
 him draw from the time he was two years old, and 
 that of late Messer Benedetto had shown him some- 
 
32 THE CHILD OF URBINO, 
 
 thing of the mysteries of painting on biscuit and pro- 
 ducing the metallic lustre which was the especial 
 glory of the pottery of the duchy ! 
 
 How glad he was, and how his little heart bounded 
 and seemed to sing in this his first enjoyment of the 
 joyous liberties and powers of creative work ! 
 
 A well-known writer has said that genius is the 
 power of taking pains; he should have said rather 
 that genius has this power also, but that first and fore- 
 most it possesses the power of spontaneous and exqui- 
 site production without effort and with delight. 
 
 Luca looked at him (not at his work, for the child 
 had made him promise not to do so) and began to 
 marvel at his absorption, his intentness, the evident 
 facility with whiiih he worked ; the little figure, lean- 
 ing over the great dish on the bare board of the table, 
 with the oval opening of the window and the blue sky 
 beyond it, began to grow sacred to him with more than 
 the sanctity of childhood. Raffaelle's face grew very 
 serious, too, and lost its colour, and his large hazel eyes 
 looked very big and grave and dark. 
 
 " Perhaps Signor Giovanni will be angry with me if 
 ever he know," thought poor Luca ; but it was too late 
 to alter anything now. The child Sanzio had become 
 his master. 
 
 So Raffaelle, unknown to any one else, worked on 
 and on there in the attic while the tulips bloomed and 
 withered, and the honeysuckle was in flower in the 
 hedges, and the wheat and barley were being cut in 
 the quiet fields lying far down below in the sunshine. 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 33 
 
 For midsummer was come ; the three months, all but 
 a week, had passed by. It was known that every one 
 was ready to compete for the duke's choice. 
 
 One afternoon Raffaelle took Luca by the hand and 
 said to him, " Come." 
 
 He led the young man up to the table, beneath the 
 unglazed window, where he had passed so many of 
 these ninety days of the spring and summer. 
 
 Luca gave a great cry, and stood gazing, gazing, 
 gazing. Then he fell on his knees and embraced the 
 little feet of the child : it was the first homage that 
 he, whose life became one beautiful song of praise, 
 received from man. 
 
 " Dear Luca," he said, softly, " do not do that. If 
 it be indeed good, let us thank God." 
 
 What his friend saw were the great oval dish and 
 the great jar or vase standing with the sunbeams full 
 upon them, and the brushes and the tools and the 
 colours all strewn around. And they shone with lus- 
 trous opaline hues and wondrous flame-like glories 
 and gleaming iridescence, like melted jewels, and 
 there were all manner of graceful symbols and classic 
 designs wrought upon them ; and their borders were 
 garlanded with cherubs and flowers, bearing the arms 
 of Montefeltro ; and the landscapes were the tender, 
 homely landscapes round about Urbino ; and the 
 mountains had the solemn radiance that the Apen- 
 nines wore at evening time ; and amidst the figures 
 there was one supreme, white-robed, golden-crowned 
 Esther, to whom the child painter had given the face 
 
34 THE CHILD OF UEBINO. 
 
 of Pacifica. And this wondrous creation, wrought 
 by a baby's hand, had safely and secretly passed the 
 ordeal of the furnace, and had come forth without 
 spot or flaw. 
 
 Luca ceased not from kneeling at the feet of 
 Raffaelle, as ever since has kneeled the world. 
 
 " wondrous boy ! angel sent unto men ! " 
 sighed the poor 'prentice, as he gazed ; and his heart 
 was so full that he burst into tears. 
 
 " Let us thank God," said little Raffaelle, again ; 
 and he joined his small hands that had wrought this 
 miracle, and said his Laus Domini. 
 
 When the precious jar and the great platter were 
 removed to the wardrobe and shut up in safety behind 
 the steel wards of the locker, Luca said, timidly, feel- 
 ing twenty years in age behind the wisdom of this 
 divine child, " But, dearest boy, I do not see how your 
 marvellous and most exquisite accomplishment can 
 advantage me. Even if you would allow it to pass as 
 mine, I could not accept such a thing : it would be a 
 fraud, a shame: not even to win Pacifica could I 
 consent." 
 
 "Be not so hasty, good friend," said Raffaelle. 
 "Wait just a little longer yet and see. I have my 
 own idea. Do trust in me." 
 
 " Heaven speaks in you, that I believe," said Luca, 
 humbly. 
 
 Raffaelle answered not, but ran down-stairs, and 
 passing Pacifica, threw his arms about her in more 
 than his usual affectionate caresses. 
 
THE CHILD OF UBIUNO. 35 
 
 " Pacifica, be of good heart," he murmured, and 
 would not be questioned, but ran homeward to his 
 mother. 
 
 " Can it be that Luca has done well ? " thought 
 Pacifica; but she feared the child's wishes had out- 
 run his wisdom. He could not be any judge, a child 
 of seven years, even though he were the son of that 
 good and honest painter and poet, Giovanni Sanzio. 
 
 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 Guido- 
 baldo was then to come and make his choice from 
 amidst them ; and the master-potter, a little because 
 he was a cpurtier, and more because he liked to affect 
 a mighty indifference and to show he had no favour- 
 itism, 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." 
 
36 THE CHILD OF UBBINO, 
 
 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- 
 coloured velvet, was standing ready to advance bare- 
 headed 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 work- 
 room 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 neighbour, who knew him to be an 
 honest man and a true, if overobstinate and too vain 
 of his own place in Urbino. 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 37 
 
 " Our lord the duke ! " shouted the people standing 
 in the street; and Ser Benedetto walked out with 
 stately tread to receive the honour 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 Guido- 
 baldo ! " 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. 
 
 The young duke and his court came riding down 
 the street, and paused before the old stone house of 
 the master-potter, — splendid gentlemen, though only 
 in their morning apparel, with noble Barbary steeds 
 fretting under them, and little pages and liveried 
 varlets about their steps. Usually, unless he went 
 hunting or on a visit to some noble, Guidobaldo, like 
 his father, walked about Urbino like any one of his 
 citizens ; but he knew the pompous and somewhat 
 vainglorious temper of Messer Benedetto, and good- 
 naturedly was willing to humour its harmless vanities. 
 Bowing to the ground, the master-potter led the way, 
 walking backward into his bottega; the courtiers 
 followed their prince ; Giovanni Sanzio with his little 
 son and a few other privileged persons went in also at 
 due distance. At the farther end of the workshop 
 stood the pupils and the artists from Pesaro and other 
 places in the duchy whose works were there in com- 
 petition. In all there were some ten competitors: 
 
38 THE CHILD OF UBBINO. 
 
 poor Luca, who had set his own work on the table 
 with the rest as he was obliged to do, stood hindmost 
 of all, shrinking back, to hide his misery, into the 
 deepest shadow of the deep-bayed latticed window. 
 
 On the narrow deal benches that served as tables 
 on working-days to the pottery -painters were ranged 
 the dishes and the jars, with a number attached to 
 each, — no name to any, because Signor Benedetto 
 was resolute to prove his own absolute disinterested- 
 ness in the matter of choice : he wished for the best 
 artist. Prince Guidobaldo, doffing his plumed cap 
 courteously, walked down the long room and examined 
 each production in its turn. On the whole, the col- 
 lection made a brave display of majolica, though he 
 was perhaps a little disappointed at the result in each 
 individual case, for he had wanted something out of 
 the conimon run and absolutely perfect. Still, with 
 fair words he complimented Signor Benedetto on the 
 brave show, and only before the work of poor Luca 
 was he entirely silent, since indeed silence was the 
 greatest kindness he could show to it : the drawing 
 was bold and regular, but the colouring was hopelessly 
 crude, glaring, and ill-disposed. 
 
 At last, before a vase and a dish that stood modestly 
 at the very farthest end of the deal bench, the duke 
 gave a sudden exclamation of delight, and Signor 
 Benedetto grew crimson with pleasure and surprise, 
 and Giovanni Sanzio pressed a little nearer and tried 
 to see over the , shoulders of the gentlemen of the 
 court, feeling sure that something rare and beautiful 
 
THE CHILD OF UBBINO. 39 
 
 must have called forth that cry of wonder from the 
 Lord of Montefeltro, and having seen at a glance 
 that for his poor friend Luca there was no sort of 
 hope. 
 
 "This is beyond all comparison," said Guidobaldo, 
 taking the great oval dish up reverently in his hands. 
 " Maestro Benedetto, I do felicitate you indeed that 
 you should possess such a pupil. He will be a glory 
 to our beloved Urbino." 
 
 " It is indeed most excellent worlc, my lord duke," 
 said the master-potter, who was trembling with sur- 
 prise and dared not show all the astonishment and 
 emotion that he felt at the discovery of so exquisite a 
 creation in his bottega. " It must be," he added, for 
 he was a very honest man, " the work of one of the 
 lads of Pesaro or Castel Durante. I have no such 
 craftsman in my workshop. It is beautiful exceed- 
 ingly ! " 
 
 " It is worth its weight in gold ! " said the prince, 
 sharing his emotion. " Look, gentlemen — look ! Will 
 not the fame of Urbino be borne beyond the Apennines 
 and Alps?" 
 
 Thus summoned, the court and the citizens came to 
 look, and averred that truly never in Urbino had they 
 seen such painting on majolica. 
 
 " But whose is it ? " said Guidobaldo, impatiently, 
 casting his eyes over the gathered group in the back- 
 ground of apprentices and artists. " Maestro Bene- 
 detto, I pray you, the name of the artist ; I pray you, 
 quick 1 " 
 
40 THE CHILD OF UEBINO, 
 
 " It is marked number eleven, my lord," answered 
 the master-potter. " Ho, you who reply to that num- 
 ber, stand out and give your name. My lord duke 
 has chosen your work. Ho, there ! do you hear me ? " 
 
 But not one of the group moved. The young men 
 looked from one to another. Who was this nameless 
 rival ? There were but ten of themselves. 
 
 "Ho, there!" repeated Signor Benedetto, getting 
 angry. " Cannot you find a tongue, I say ? Who has 
 wrought this work ? Silence is but insolence to his 
 Highness and to me ! " 
 
 Then the child Sanzio loosened his little hand from 
 his father's hold, and went forward, and stood before 
 the master-potter. 
 
 " I painted it," he said, with a pleased smile : " I, 
 Raffaelle." 
 
 Can you not fancy, without telling, the confusion, 
 the wonder, the rapture, the incredulity, the questions, 
 the wild ecstasy of praise, that followed on the dis- 
 covery of the child artist ? Only the presence of 
 Guidobaldo kept it in anything like decent quietude, 
 and even he, all duke though he was, felt his eyes wet 
 and felt his heart swell ; for he himself was child- 
 less, and for the joy that Giovanni Sanzio felt that 
 day he would have given his patrimony and duchy. 
 
 He took a jewel hung on a gold chain from his own 
 breast and threw it over Raffaelle's shoulders. 
 
 " There is your first guerdon," he said ; " you will 
 have many, wondrous child, who shall live when we 
 are dust ! " 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 43 
 
 Raffaelle, who himself was all the while quite tran- 
 quil and unmoved, kissed the duke's hand with sweetest 
 grace, then turned to his own father. 
 
 " It is true I have won my lord duke's prize ? " 
 
 " Quite true, my angel ! " said Giovanni Sanzio, with 
 tremulous voice. 
 
 Raffaelle looked up at Maestro Benedetto. 
 
 " Then I claim the hand of Pacifica ! " 
 
 There was a smile on all the faces round, even on 
 the darker countenances of the vanquished painters. 
 
 " Oh, would indeed you were of age to be my son 
 by marriage, as you are the son of my heart ! " mur- 
 mured Signor Benedetto. " Dear and marvellous 
 child, you are but jesting, I know. Tell me what it 
 is indeed that you « would have. I could deny you 
 nothing ; and truly it is you who are my master." 
 
 " I am your pupil," said Raffaelle, with that pretty 
 serious smile of his, his little fingers playing with the 
 ducal jewel. " I could never have painted that majol- 
 ica yonder had you not taught me the secrets and 
 management of your colours. Now, dear maestro mine, 
 and you, my lord duke, do hear me ! I by the terms 
 of the contest have won the hand of Pacifica and the 
 right of association with Messer Ronconi. I take 
 these rights and I give them over to my dear friend 
 Luca of Fano, because he is the honestest man in all 
 the world, and does honour Signor Benedetto and love 
 Pacifica as no other can do so well, and Pacifica -loves 
 him ; and my lord duke will say that thus all will be 
 well." 
 
44 THE CHILD OF URBINO. 
 
 So with the grave, innocent audacity of a child he 
 spoke, — this seven-year-old painter who was greater 
 than any there. 
 
 Signor Benedetto stood mute, sombre, agitated. 
 Luca had sprung forward and dropped on one knee : 
 he was as pale as ashes. Raffaelle looked at him 
 with a smile. 
 
 "My lord duke," he said, with his little gentle 
 smile, " you have chosen my work ; defend me in my 
 rights." 
 
 "Listen to the voice of an angel, my good Ben- 
 edetto ; heaven speaks by him," said Guidobaldo, 
 gravely, laying his hand on the arm of his master- 
 potter. 
 
 Harsh Signor Benedetto burst into tears. 
 
 " I can refuse him nothing," he said, with a sob. 
 " He will give such glory unto Urbino as never the 
 world hath seen ! " 
 
 " And call down this fair Pacifica whom Raffaelle 
 has won," said the sovereign of the duchy, " and 1 
 will give her myself as her dower as many gold pieces 
 as we can cram into this famous vase. An honest 
 youth who loves her and whom she loves, — what 
 better can you do, Benedetto ? Young man, rise up 
 and be happy. An angel has descended on earth this 
 day for you." 
 
 But Luca heard not : he was still kneeling at the 
 feet of Raffaelle, where the world has knelt ever 
 since. 
 
MOUFFLOU 
 
MOUFFLOU. 
 
 MOUFFLOU'S masters were some boys and girls. 
 They were very poor, but they were very merry. 
 They lived in an old, dark, tumble-down place, and 
 their father had been dead five years ; their mother's 
 care was all they knew ; and Tasso was the eldest of 
 them all, a lad of nearly twenty, and he was so kind, 
 so good, so laborious, so cheerful, and so gentle, that 
 the children all younger than he adored him. Tasso 
 was a gardener. Tasso, however, though the eldest 
 and mainly the breadwinner, was not so much Mouf- 
 flon's master as was little Romolo, who was only ten, 
 and a cripple. Romolo, called generally Lolo, had 
 taught Mouflfiou all he knew ; and that all was a very 
 great deal, for nothing cleverer than was Moufflon 
 had ever walked upon four legs. 
 
 Why Moufflon ? 
 
 Well, when the poodle had been given to them by 
 a soldier who was going back to his home in Pied- 
 mont, he had been a white woolly creature of a year 
 old, and the children's mother, who was a Corsican 
 by birth, had said that he was just like a moufflon^ as 
 they call sheep in Corsica. White and woolly this 
 
 47 
 
48 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 dog remained, and he became the handsomest and 
 biggest poodle in all the city, and the corruption of 
 Moufflon from Moufflon remained the name by which 
 he was known ; it was silly, perhaps, but it suited 
 him and the children, and Moufflon he was. 
 
 They lived in an old quarter of Florence, in that 
 picturesque zigzag which goes round the grand church 
 of Or San Michele, and which is almost more Vene- 
 tian than Tuscan in its mingling of colour, charm, 
 stateliness, popular confusion, and architectural maj- 
 esty. The tall old houses are weather-beaten into 
 the most delicious hues ; the pavement is enchant- 
 ingly encumbered with peddlers and stalls and all 
 kinds of trades going on in the open air, in that 
 bright, merry, beautiful Italian custom which, alas, 
 alas ! is being driven away by new-fangled laws 
 which deem it better for the people to be stuffed up 
 in close, stewing rooms without air, and would fain 
 do away with all the good-tempered politics and the 
 sensible philosophies and the wholesome chatter 
 which the open-street trades and street gossipry en- 
 courage, for it is good for the populace to sfogare, and 
 in no other way can it do so one-half so innocently. 
 Drive it back into musty shops, and it is driven at 
 once to mutter sedition. . . . But you want to hear 
 about Moufflon. 
 
 Well, Moufflon lived here in that high house with 
 the sign of the lamb in wrought iron, which shows it 
 was once a warehouse of the old guild of the Arte 
 della Lana. They are all old houses here, drawn 
 
MOUFFLOU. 49 
 
 round about that grand church which I called once, 
 and will call again, like a mighty casket of oxidised 
 silver. A mighty casket indeed, holding the Holy 
 Spirit within it ; and with the vermilion and the blue 
 and the orange glowing in its niches and its lunettes 
 like enamels, and its statues of the apostles strong 
 and noble, like the times in which they were created, 
 — St. Peter with his keys, and St. Mark with his open 
 book, and St. George leaning on his sword, and others 
 also, solemn and austere as they, austere though 
 benign, for do they not guard the White Tabernacle 
 of Orcagna within ? 
 
 The church stands firm as a rock, square as a for- 
 tress of stone, and the winds and the waters of the 
 skies may beat about it as they will, they have no 
 power to disturb its sublime repose. Sometimes I 
 think of all the noble things in all our Italy Or San 
 Michele is the noblest, standing there in its stern 
 magnificence, amidst people's hurrying feet and noisy 
 laughter, a memory of God. 
 
 The little masters of Moufflon lived right in its 
 shadow, where the bridge of stone spans the space 
 between the houses and the church high in mid-air : 
 and little Lolo loved the church with a great love. 
 He loved it in the morning time, when the sunbeams 
 turned it into dusky gold and jasper ; he loved it in 
 the evening time, when the lights of its altars glim- 
 mered in the dark, and the scent of its incense came 
 out into the street; he loved it in the great feasts, 
 when the huge clusters of lilies were borne inside it ; 
 
50 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 he loved it in the solemn nights of winter ; the flick- 
 ering gleam of the dull lamps shone on the robes of 
 an apostle, or the sculpture of a shield, or the glow of 
 a casement-moulding in majolica. He loved it always, 
 and-, without knowing why, he called it la mia chiesa. 
 
 Lolo, being lame and of delicate health, was not 
 enabled to go to school or to work, though he wove 
 the straw covering of wine-flasks and plaited the cane 
 matting with busy fingers. But for the most part he 
 did as he liked, and spent most of his time sitting on 
 the parapet of Or San Michele, watching the venders 
 of earthenware at their trucks, or trotting with his 
 crutch (and he could trot a good many miles when he 
 chose) out with Moufflon down a bit of the Stocking- 
 makers' Street, along under the arcades of the Uffizi, 
 and so over the Jewellers' Bridge, and out by byways 
 that he knew into the fields on the hillside upon the 
 other bank of Arno. Moufflou and he would spend 
 half the day — all the day — out there in daffodil- 
 time ; and Lolo would come home with great bundles 
 and sheaves of golden flowers, and he and Moufflou 
 were happy. 
 
 His mother never liked to say a harsh word to 
 Lolo, for he was lame through her fault : she had let 
 him fall in his babyhood, and the mischief had been 
 done to his hip never again to be undone. So she 
 never raised her voice to him, though she did often to 
 the others, — to curly-pated Cecco, and pretty black- 
 eyed Dina, and saucy Bice, and sturdy Beppo, and 
 even to the good, manly, hard-working Tasso. Tasso 
 
MOUFFLOU. 51 
 
 was the mainstay of the whole, though he was but a 
 gardener's lad, working in the green Cascine at small 
 wages. But all he earned he brought home to his 
 mother ; and he alone kept in order the lazy, high- 
 tempered Sandro, and he alone kept in check Bice's 
 love of finery, and he alone could with shrewdness 
 and care make both ends meet and put minestra 
 always in the pot and bread always in the cupboard. 
 
 When his mother thought, as she thought indeed 
 almost ceaselessly, that with a few months he would be 
 of the age to draw his number, and might draw a high 
 one and be taken from her for three years, the poor 
 soul believed her very heart would burst and break ; 
 and many a day at twilight she would start out unper- 
 ceived and creep into the great church and pour her 
 soul forth in supplication before the White Tabernacle. 
 
 Yet, pray as she would, no miracle could happen to 
 make Tasso free of military service : if he drew a fatal 
 number, go he must, even though he take all the lives 
 of them to their ruin with him. 
 
 One morning Lolo sat as usual on the parapet of the 
 church. Moufflon beside him. It was a brilliant morn- 
 ing in September. The men at the hand-barrows and 
 at the stalls were selling the crockery, the silk hand- 
 kerchiefs, and the straw hats which form the staple 
 of the commerce that goes on around about Or San 
 Michele, — very blithe, good-natured, gay commerce^ 
 for the most part, not got through, however, of course, 
 without bawling and screaming, and shouting and 
 gesticulating, as if the sale of a penny pipkin or a 
 
52 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 twopenny pie-pan were the occasion for the exchange 
 of many thousands of pounds sterling and cause for 
 the whole world's commotion. It was about eleven 
 o'clock ; the poor petitioners were going in for alms 
 to the house of the fraternity of San Giovanni Bat- 
 tista ; the barber at the corner was shaving a big man 
 with a cloth tucked about his chin, and his chair set 
 well out on the pavement ; the sellers of the pipkins 
 and pie-pans were screaming till they were hoarse, 
 "£/>i soldo Vuno, due soldi tre!^^ big bronze bells were 
 booming till they seemed to clang right up to the 
 deep-blue sky ; some brethren of the Misericordia went 
 by bearing a black bier; a large sheaf of glowing 
 flowers — dahlias, zinnias, asters, and daturas — was 
 borne through the huge arched door of the church 
 near St. Mark and his open book. Lolo looked on at 
 it all, and so did Moufflou, and a stranger looked 
 at them as he left the church. 
 
 "You have a handsome poodle there, my little 
 man," he said to Lolo, in a foreigner's too distinct and 
 careful Italian. 
 
 "Moufflon is beautiful," said Lolo, with pride. 
 " You should see him when he is just washed ; but 
 we can only wash him on Sundays, because then Tasso 
 is at home." 
 
 " How old is your dog ? " 
 
 " Three years old." 
 
 " Does he do any tricks ? " 
 
 " Does he ! " said Lolo, with a very derisive laugh ; 
 " why. Moufflon can do anything ! He can walk on 
 
IN FRONT OF THE CHURCH. 
 
MOUFFLOU. 55 
 
 two legs ever so long ; make ready, present, and fire ; 
 die ; waltz ; beg, of course ; shut a door ; make a wheel- 
 barrow of himself; there is nothing he will not do. 
 Would you like to see him do something ? " 
 
 " Very much," said the foreigner. 
 
 To Moufflon and to Lolo the street was the same 
 thing as home ; this cheery inazzetta by the church, 
 so utterly empty sometimes, and sometimes so noisy 
 and crowded, was but the wider threshold of their 
 home to both the poodle and the child. 
 
 So there, under the lofty and stately walls of the 
 old church, Lolo put Moufflou through his exercises. 
 They were second nature to Moufflou, as to most 
 poodles. He had inherited his address at them from 
 clever parents, and, as he had never been frightened 
 or coerced, all his lessons and acquirements were but 
 play to him. He acquitted himself admirably, and 
 the crockery-venders came and looked on, and a sac- 
 ristan came out of the church and smiled, and the 
 barber left his customer's chin all in a lather while he 
 laughed, for the good folk of the quarter were all 
 proud of Moufflou and never tired of him, and the 
 pleasant, easy-going, good-humoured disposition of 
 the Tuscan populace is so far removed from the stupid 
 buckram and whalebone in which the new-fangled 
 democracy wants to imprison it. 
 
 The stranger also was much diverted by Moufflon's 
 talents, and said, half aloud, " How this clever dog 
 would amuse poor Victor! Would you bring your 
 poodle to please a sick child I have at home ? " he 
 
56 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 said, quite aloud, to Lolo, who smiled and answered 
 that he would. Where was the sick child ? 
 
 " At the Gran Bretagna ; not far off," said the gen- 
 tleman. " Come this afternoon, and ask for me by 
 this name.'' 
 
 He dropped his card and a couple of francs into 
 Lolo's hand, and went his way. Lolo, with Moufllou 
 scampering after him, dashed into his own house, and 
 stumped up the stairs, his crutch making a terrible 
 noise on the stone. 
 
 " Mother, mother ! see what I have got because 
 Moufilou did his tricks," he shouted. " And now you 
 can buy those shoes you want so much, and the coffee 
 that you miss so of a morning, and the new linen for 
 Tasso, and the shirts for Sandro." 
 
 For to the mind of Lolo two francs was as two 
 millions, — source unfathomable of riches inexhaust- 
 ible ! 
 
 With the afternoon he and Moufflon trotted down 
 the arcades of the Uffizi and down the Lung' Arno to 
 the hotel of the stranger, and, showing the stranger's 
 card, which Lolo could not read, they were shown at 
 once into a' great chamber, all gilding and fresco and 
 velvet furniture. 
 
 But Lolo, being a little Florentine, was never troubled 
 by externals, or daunted by mere sofas and chairs ; he 
 stood and looked around him with perfect composure, 
 and Moufflon, whose attitude, when he was not romp- 
 ing, was always one of magisterial gravity, sat on his 
 haunches and did the same. 
 
MOUFFLOU. 57 
 
 Soon the foreigner he had seen in the forenoon 
 entered and spoke to him, and led him into another 
 chamber, where, stretched on a couch, was a little 
 wan-faced boy about seven years old ; a pretty boy, 
 but so pallid, so wasted, so helpless. This poor little 
 boy was heir to a great name and a great fortune, but 
 all the science in the world could not make him 
 strong enough to run about among the daisies, or able 
 to draw a single breath without pain. A feeble smile 
 lit up his face as he saw Moufflon and Lolo ; then a 
 shadow chased it away. 
 
 " Little boy is lame like me," he said, in a tongue 
 Lolo did not understand. 
 
 " Yes, but he is a strong little boy, and can move 
 about, as perhaps the suns of his country will make 
 you do," said the gentleman, who was the poor little 
 boy's father. ''He has brought you his poodle to 
 amuse you. What a handsome dog ! is it not ? " 
 
 " Oh, hufflins ! " said the poor little fellow, stretch- 
 ing out his wasted hands to Moufflon, who submitted 
 his leonine crest to the caress. 
 
 Then Lolo went through the performance, and 
 Moufflon acquitted himself ably as ever ; and the little 
 invalid laughed and shouted with his tiny thin voice, 
 and enjoyed it all immensely, and rained cakes and 
 biscuits on both the poodle and its master. Lolo 
 crumped the pastries with willing white teeth, and 
 Moufflon did no less. Then they got up to go, and 
 the sick child on the couch burst into fretful lamenta^ 
 tions and outcries. 
 
58 MOUFFLOTT. 
 
 " I want the dog ! I will have the dog ! " was all 
 he kept repeating. 
 
 But Lolo did not know what he said, and was only 
 sorry to see him so unhappy. 
 
 " You shall have the dog to-morrow," said the 
 gentleman, to pacify his little son ; and he hurried 
 Lolo and Moufflon out of the room, and consigned 
 them to a servant, having given Lolo five francs this 
 time. 
 
 u Why, Moufflon," said Lolo, with a chuckle of 
 delight, " if we could find a foreigner every day, we 
 could eat meat at supper, Moufflou, and go to the 
 theatre every evening ! " 
 
 And he and his crutch clattered home with great 
 eagerness and excitement, and Moufflon trotted on 
 his four frilled feet, the blue bow with which Bice 
 had tied up his curls on the top of his head, fluttering 
 in the wind. But, alas! even his five francs could 
 bring no comfort at home. He found his whole family 
 wailing and mourning in utterly inconsolable distress. 
 
 Tasso had drawn his number that morning, and the 
 number was seven, and he must go and be a conscript 
 for three years. 
 
 The poor young man stood in the midst of his 
 weeping brothers and sisters, with his mother leaning 
 against his shoulder, and down his own brown cheeks 
 the tears were falling. He must go, and lose his 
 place in the public gardens, and leave his people to 
 starve as they might, and be put in a tomfool's jacket, 
 and drafted off among cursing and swearing and 
 
MOUFFLOU. 59 
 
 strange faces, friendless, homeless, miserable ! And 
 the mother, — what would become of the mother ? 
 
 Tasso was the best of lads and the mildest. He 
 was quite happy sweeping up the leaves in the long 
 alleys of the Cascine, or mowing the green lawns 
 under the ilex avenues, and coming home at supper- 
 time among the merry little" people and the good 
 woman that he loved. He was quite contented ; he 
 wanted nothing, only to be let alone ; and they would 
 not let him alone. They would haul him away to put 
 a heavy musket in his hand and a heavy knapsack on 
 his back, and drill him, and curse him, and make him 
 into a human target, a live popingay. 
 
 No one had any heed for Lolo and his five francs, 
 and Moufflon, understanding that some great sorrow 
 had fallen on his friends, sat down and lifted up his 
 voice and howled. 
 
 Tasso must go away ! — that was all they under- 
 stood. For three long years they must go without 
 the sight of his face, the aid of his strength, the 
 pleasure of his smile : Tasso must go ! When Lolo 
 understood the calamity that had befallen them, he 
 gathered Moufflon up against his breast, and sat down, 
 too, on the floor beside him and cried as if he would 
 never stop crying. 
 
 There was no help for it : it was one of those mis- 
 fortunes which are, as we say in Italian, like a tile 
 tumbled on the head. The tile drops from a height, 
 and the poor head bows under the unseen blow. 
 That is all. 
 
60 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 "What is the use of that?" said the mother, 
 passionately, when Lolo showed her his five francs. 
 " It will not buy Tasso's discharge." 
 
 Lolo felt that his mother was cruel and unjust, and 
 crept to bed with Moufflou. Moufflon always slept on 
 Lolo's feet. 
 
 The next morning I/olo got up before sunrise, and 
 he and Moufflou accompanied Tasso to his work in 
 the Cascine. 
 
 Lolo loved his brother, and clung to every moment 
 whilst they could still be together. 
 
 " Can nothing keep you, Tasso ? " he said, despair- 
 ingly, as they went down the leafy aisles, whilst the 
 Arno water was growing golden as the sun rose. 
 
 Tasso sighed. 
 
 "Nothing, dear. Unless Gesu would send me a 
 thousand francs to buy a substitute." 
 
 And he knew he might as well have said, " If one 
 could coin gold ducats out of the sunbeams on Arno 
 water." 
 
 Lolo was very sorrowful as he lay on the grass in 
 the meadow where Tasso was at work, and the poodle 
 lay stretched beside him. 
 
 When Lolo went home to dinner (Tasso took his 
 wrapped in a handkerchief), he found his mother very 
 agitated and excited. She was laughing one moment, 
 crying the next. She was passionate and peevish, 
 tender and jocose by turns ; there was something 
 forced and feverish about her which the children felt 
 but did not comprehend. She was a woman of not 
 
HE GATHKRKD MOUFFI.OU UP AGAINST HIS HRKAST AND 
 CKIED AS IF HE WOLLD NEVEK STOP.' 
 
J^OUFFLOU. 63 
 
 very much intelligence, and she had a secret, and she 
 carried it ill, and knew not what to do with it ; but 
 they could not tell that. They only felt a vague 
 sense of disturbance and timidity at her unwonted 
 manner. 
 
 The meal over (it was only bean soup, and that is 
 soon eaten), the mother said sharply to Lolo, " Your 
 Aunt Anita wants you this afternoon. She has to go 
 out, and you are needed to stay with the children : be 
 ofP with you." 
 
 Lolo was an obedient child ; he took his hat and 
 jumped up as quickly as his halting hip would let 
 him. He called Moufflon, who was asleep. 
 
 " Leave the dog," said his mother, sharply. " 'Nita 
 will not have him messing and carrying mud about 
 her nice clean rooms. She told me so. Leave him, 
 I say." 
 
 " Leave Moufflon ! " echoed Lolo, for never in all 
 Moufflon's life had Lolo parted from him. Leave 
 Moufflon ! He stared open-eyed and open-mouthed 
 at his mother. What could have come to her ? 
 
 " Leave him, I say," she repeated, more sharply 
 than ever. " Must I speak twice to my own children ? 
 Be off with you, and leave the dog, I say." 
 
 And she clutched Moufflon by his long silken mane 
 and dragged him backwards, whilst with the other 
 hand she thrust out of the door Lolo and Bice. 
 
 Lolo began to hammer with his crutch at the door 
 thus closed on him ; but Bice coaxed and entreated 
 him. 
 
64 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 "Poor mother has been so worried about Tasso," 
 she pleaded. " And what harm can come to Mouf- 
 flon ? And I do think he was tired, Lolo ; the Cas- 
 cine is a long way ; and it is quite true that Aunt 
 'Nita never liked him." 
 
 So by one means and another she coaxed her brother 
 away ; and they went almost in silence to where their 
 Aunt Anita dwelt, which was across the river, near the 
 dark red bell-shaped dome of Santa Spirito. 
 
 It was true that her aunt had wanted them to mind 
 her room and her babies whilst she was away carrying 
 home some lace to a villa outside the Roman gate, for 
 she was a lace-washer and clear-starcher by trade. 
 There they had to stay in the little dark room with 
 the two babies, with nothing to amuse the time except 
 the clang of the bells of the church of the Holy Spirit, 
 and the voices of the lemonade-sellers shouting in the 
 street below. Aunt Anita did not get back till it was 
 more than dusk, and the two children trotted home- 
 ward hand in hand, Lolo's leg dragging itself painfully 
 along, for without Moufflon's white figure dancing on 
 before him he felt very tired indeed. It was pitch- 
 dark when they got to Or San Michele, and the lamps 
 burned dully. 
 
 Lolo stumped up the stairs wearily, with a vague, 
 dull fear at his small heart. 
 
 " Moufflon, Moufflon ! " he called. Where was Mouf- 
 flou ? Always at the first sound of his crutch the 
 poodle came flying toward him. " Moufflon, Mouf- 
 flon ! " he called all the way up the long, dark, twist- 
 
MOUFFLOU. 65 
 
 ing stone stair. He pushed open the door, and he 
 called again, " Moufflou, Moufflon ! " 
 
 But no dog answered to his call. 
 
 " Mother, where is Moufflou ? " he asked, staring 
 with blinking, dazzled eyes into the oil-lit room where 
 his mother sat knittingo Tasso was not then home 
 from work. His mother went on with her knitting ; 
 there was an uneasy look on her face. 
 
 " Mother, what have you done with Moufflou, my 
 Moufflou ? " said Lolo, with a look that was almost 
 stern on his ten-year-old face. 
 
 Then his mother, without looking up, and moving 
 her knitting-needles very rapidly, said : 
 
 " Moufflou is sold ! " 
 
 And little Dina, who was a quick, pert child, cried, 
 with a shrill voice : 
 
 " Mother has sold him for a thousand francs to the 
 foreign gentleman." 
 
 "Sold him!" 
 
 Lolo grew white and grew cold as ice ; he stam- 
 mered, threw up his hands over his head, gasped a 
 little for breath, then fell down in a dead swoon, his 
 poor useless limb doubled under him. 
 
 When Tasso came home that sad night and found 
 his little brother shivering, moaning, and half deliri- 
 ous, and when he heard what had been done, he was 
 sorely grieved. 
 
 " Oh, mother, how could you do it ? " he cried. 
 " Poor, poor Moufflou ! and Lolo loves him so ! " 
 
 " I have got the money," said his mother, feverishly. 
 
66 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 " and you will not need to go for a soldier : we can 
 buy your substitute. What is a poodle, that you 
 mourn about it ? We can get another poodle for 
 Lolo." 
 
 "Another will not be MoufBou," said Tasso, and 
 yet was seized with such a frantic happiness himself 
 at the knowledge that he would not need go to 
 the army, that he, too, felt as if he were drunk on 
 new wine, and had not the heart to rebuke his 
 mother. 
 
 " A thousand francs ! " he muttered ; " a thousand 
 francs ! Dio mio ! Who could ever have fancied any- 
 body would have given such a price for a common 
 white poodle ? One would think the gentleman had 
 bought the church and the tabernacle ! " 
 
 *' Fools and their money are soon parted," said his 
 mother, with cross contempt. 
 
 It was true : she had sold Moufflon. 
 
 The English gentleman had called on her while 
 Lolo and the dog had been in the Cascine, and had said 
 that he was desirous of buying the poodle, which had 
 so diverted his sick child that the little invalid would 
 not be comforted unless he possessed it. Now, at any 
 other time the good woman would have sturdily refused 
 any idea of selling Moufflon ; but that morning the 
 thousand francs which would buy Tasso's substitute 
 were for ever in her mind and before her eyes. When 
 she heard the foreigner her heart gave a great leap, 
 and her head swam giddily, and she thought, in a 
 spasm of longing, — if she could get those thousand 
 
MOUFFLOU. 67 
 
 francs ! But though she was so dizzy and so upset 
 she retained her grip on her native Florentine shrewd- 
 ness. She said nothing of her need of the money ; 
 not a syllable of her sore distress. On the contrary, 
 she was coy and wary, affected great reluctance to 
 part with her pet, invented a great offer made for him 
 by a director of a circus, and finally let fall a hint 
 that less than a thousand francs she could never take 
 for poor Moufflon. 
 
 The gentleman assented with so much willingness 
 to the price that she instantly regretted not having 
 asked double. He told her that if she would take the 
 poodle that afternoon to his hotel the money should 
 be paid to her ; so she despatched her children after 
 their noonday meal in various directions, and herself 
 took Moufflon to his doom. She could not believe her 
 senses wnen ten hmid red-franc notes were put into 
 her hand. She scrawled her signature, Rosina Cala- 
 bucci, to a formal receipt, and went away, leaving 
 Moufflon in his new owner's rooms, and hearing his 
 howls and moans pursue her all the way down the 
 staircase and out into the air. 
 
 She was not easy at what she had done. 
 
 " It seemed," she said to herself, " like selling a 
 Christian." 
 
 But then to keep her eldest son at home, — what 
 a joy that was ! On the whole, she cried so and 
 laughed so as she went down the Lung' Arno that once 
 or twice people looked at her, thi^iking her out of her 
 senses, and a guard spoke to her angrily. 
 
68 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 Meanwhile, Lolo was sick and delirious with grief. 
 Twenty times he got out of his bed and screamed to 
 be allowed to go with Moufflou, and twenty times his 
 mother and his brothers put him back again and held 
 him down and tried in vain to quiet him. 
 
 The child was beside himself with misery. " Mouf- 
 flon ! Moufflou ! " he sobbed at every moment ; and by 
 night he was in a raging fever, and when his mother, 
 frightened, ran and called in the doctor of the 
 quarter, that worthy shook his head and said some- 
 thing as to a shock of the nervous system, and muttered 
 a long word, — " meningitis." 
 
 Lolo took a hatred to the sight of Tasso, and thrust 
 him away, and his mother, too. 
 
 " It is for you Moufflou is sold," he said, with his 
 little teeth and hands tight clinched. 
 
 After a day or two Tasso felt as if he could not bear 
 his life, and went down to the hotel to see if the foreign 
 gentleman would allow him to have Moufflou back for 
 half an hour to quiet his little brother by a sight of 
 him. But at the hotel he was told that the 3Iilord 
 Inglese who had bought the dog of Rosina Calabucci 
 had gone that same night of the purchase to Rome, to 
 Naples, to Palermo, chi sa ? 
 
 " And Moufflou with him ? " asked Tasso. 
 
 " The harhone he had bought went with him," said 
 the porter of the hotel. " Such a beast ! Howl- 
 ing, shrieking, raging all the day, and all the paint 
 scratched off the salon door." 
 
 Poor Moufflou ! Tasso's heart was heavy as he 
 
MOUFFLOU. 69 
 
 heard of that sad helpless misery of their bartered 
 favourite and friend. 
 
 " What matter ? " said his mother, fiercely, when he 
 told her. "A dog is a dog. They will feed him 
 better than we could. In a week he will have for- 
 gotten — cM!^^ 
 
 But Tasso feared that Moufflon would not forget. 
 Lolo certainly would not. The doctor came to the 
 bedside twice a day, and ice and water were kept on 
 the aching hot little head that had got the malady 
 with the long name, and for the chief part of the 
 time Lolo lay quiet, dull, and stupid, breathing heavily, 
 and then at intervals cried and sobbed and shrieked 
 hysterically for Moufflon. 
 
 " Can you not get what he calls for to quiet him 
 with a sight of it?" said the doctor. But that was 
 not possible, and poor Rosina covered her head with 
 her apron and felt a guilty creature. 
 
 " Still, you will not go to the army," she said to 
 Tasso, clinging to that immense joy for her consola- 
 tion. " Only think ! we can pay Guido Squarcione to 
 go for you. He always said he would go if anybody 
 would pay him. Oh, my Tasso, surely to keep you is 
 worth a dog's life ! " 
 
 " And Lolo's ? " said Tasso, gloomily. " Nay, 
 mother, it works ill to meddle too much with fate. 
 I drew my number ; I was bound to go. Heaven 
 would have made it up to you somehow." 
 
 " Heaven sent me the foreigner ; the Madonna's own 
 self sent him to ease a mother's pain," said Rosina, 
 
70 MOUFFLOV. 
 
 rapidly and angrily. " There are the thousand francs 
 safe to hand in the cassone, and what, pray, is it we 
 miss ? Only a dog like a sheep, that brought gallons 
 of mud in with him every time it rained, and ate as 
 much as any one of you." 
 
 " But Lolo ? " said Tasso, under his breath. 
 
 His mother was so irritated and so tormented by 
 her own conscience that she upset all the cabbage 
 broth into the burning charcoal. 
 
 " Lolo was always a little fool, thinking of nothing 
 'but the church and the dog and nasty field-flowers," 
 she said, angrily. " I humoured him ever too much 
 because of the hurt to his hip, and so — and so — " 
 
 Then tlie poor soul made matters worse by drop- 
 ping her tears into the saucepan, and fanning the 
 charcoal so furiously that the flame caught her fan of 
 cane-leaves, and would have burned her arm had not 
 Tasso been there. 
 
 " You are my prop and safety always. Who would 
 not have done what I did ? Not Santa Felicita 
 herself," she said, with a great sob. 
 
 But all this did not cure poor Lolo. 
 
 The days and the weeks of the golden autumn 
 weather passed away, and he was always in danger, 
 and the small close room where he slept with Sandro 
 and Beppo and Tasso was not one to cure such an ill- 
 ness as had now beset him. Tasso went to his work 
 with a sick heart in the Cascine, where the colchicum 
 was all lilac among the meadow grass, and the ashes 
 and elms Were taking their first flush of the coming 
 
MOUFFLOU, 71 
 
 autumnal change. He did not think Lolo would ever 
 get well, and the good lad felt as if he had been the 
 murderer of his little brother. 
 
 True, he had had no hand or voice in the sale of 
 Moufflou, but Moufflou had been sold for his sake. It 
 made him feel half guilty, very unhappy, quite un- 
 worthy all the sacrifice that had been made for him. 
 " Nobody should meddle with fate," thought Tasso, 
 who knew his grandfather had died in San Bonifazio 
 because he had driven himself mad over the dream- 
 book trying to get lucky numbers for the lottery and 
 become a rich man at a stroke. 
 
 It was rapture indeed to know that he was free of 
 the army for a time at least, that he might go on 
 undisturbed at his healthful labour, and get a rise in 
 wages as time went on, and dwell in peace with his 
 family, and perhaps — perhaps in time earn enough 
 to marry pretty flaxen-haired Biondina, the daughter 
 of the barber in the piazzetta. It was rapture indeed ; 
 but then poor Moufflou ! — and poor, poor Lolo ! Tasso 
 felt as if he had bought his own exemption by seeing 
 his little brother and the good dog torn in pieces and 
 buried alive for his service. 
 
 And where was poor Moufflou ? 
 
 Gone far away somewhere south in the hurrying, 
 screeching, vomiting, braying train that it made Tasso 
 giddy only to look at as it rushed by the green 
 meadows beyond the Cascine on its way to the 
 sea. 
 
 " If he could see the dog he cries so for, it might 
 
72 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 save him," said the doctor, who stood with a grave face 
 watching Lolo. 
 
 But that was beyond any one's power. No one 
 could tell where Moufflou was. He might be carried 
 away to England, to France, to Russia, to America, — 
 who could say ? They did not know where his pur- 
 chaser had gone. Moufflou even might be dead. 
 
 Tlie poor mother, when the doctor said that, went 
 and looked at the ten hundred-franc notes that were 
 once like angels' faces to her, and said to them : — 
 
 " Oh, you children of Satan, why did you tempt me ? 
 I sold the poor, innocent, trustful beast to get you, and 
 now my child is dying ! " 
 
 " Her eldest son would stay at home, indeed ; but if 
 this little lame one died ! Rosina Calabucci would 
 have given up the notes and consented never to own 
 five francs in her life if only she could have gone back 
 over the time and kept Moufflou, and seen his little 
 master running out with him into the sunshine. 
 
 More than a month went by, and Lolo lay in the 
 same state, his yellow hair shorn, his eyes dilated and 
 yet stupid, life kept in him by a spoonful of milk, a 
 lump of ice, a drink of lemon-water ; always mutter- 
 ing, when he spoke at all, " Moufflou, Moufflou, dov^ ^ 
 Moufflou ? " and lying for days together in somnolence 
 and unconsciousness, with the fire eating at his brain 
 and the weight lying on it like a stone. 
 
 The neighbours were kind, and brought fruit and 
 the like, and sat up with him, and chattered so all at 
 once in one continuous brawl that they were enough 
 
MOUFFLOU. . 73 
 
 in themselves to kill him, for such is ever the Italian 
 fashion of sympathy in all illness. 
 
 But Lolo did not get well, did not even seem to see 
 the light at all, or to distinguish any sounds around 
 him ; and the doctor in plain words told Rosina Cala- 
 bucci that her little boy must die. Die, and the church 
 so near ? She could not believe it. Could St. Mark, 
 and St. George, and the rest that he had loved so do 
 nothing for him ? No, said the doctor, they could 
 do nothing; the dog might do something, since the 
 brain had so fastened on that one idea ; but then they 
 had sold the dog. 
 
 " Yes ; I sold him ! " said the poor mother, breaking 
 into floods of remorseful tears. 
 
 So at last the end drew so nigh that one twilight 
 time the priest came out of the great arched door that 
 is next St. Mark, with the Host uplifted, and a little 
 acolyte ringing the bell before it, and passed across 
 the piazzetta, and went up the dark staircase of 
 Rosina*s dwelling, and passed through the weeping, 
 terrified children, and went to the bedside of Lolo. 
 
 Lolo was unconscious, but the holy man touched 
 his little body and limbs with the sacred oil, and 
 prayed over him, and then stood sorrowful with 
 bowed head. 
 
 Lolo had had his first communion in the summer, 
 and in his preparation for it had shown an intelli- 
 gence and devoutness that had won the priest's gentle 
 heart. 
 
 Standing there, the holy man commended the inno- 
 
74 , MOUFFLOU. 
 
 cent soul to God. It was the last service to be rendered 
 to him save that very last of all when the funeral office 
 should be read above his little grave among the mil- 
 lions of nameless dead at the sepulchres of the poor at 
 Trebbiano. 
 
 All was still as the priest's voice ceased ; only the 
 sobs of the mother and of the children broke the still- 
 ness as they kneeled ; the hand of Biondina had stolen 
 into Tasso's. 
 
 Suddenly, there was a loud scuffling noise ; hurry- 
 ing feet came patter, patter, patter up the stairs, a 
 ball of mud and dust flew over the heads of the 
 kneeling figures, fleet as the wind Moufflon dashed 
 through the room and leaped upon the bed. 
 
 Lolo opened his heavy eyes, and a sudden light 
 of consciousness gleamed in them like a sunbeam. 
 " Moufflon ! " he murmured, in his little thin faint 
 voice. The dog pressed close to his breast and kissed 
 his wasted face. 
 
 Moufflon was come home ! 
 
 And Lolo came home, too, for death let go its hold 
 upon him. Little by little, very faintly and flicker- 
 ingly and very uncertainly at the first, life returned 
 to the poor little body, and reason to the tormented, 
 heated little brain. Moufflon was his physician ; 
 Moufflon, who, himself a skeleton under his matted 
 curls, would not stir from his side and looked at him 
 all day long with two beaming brown eyes full of 
 unutterable love. 
 
 Lolo was happy ; he asked no questions, — was too 
 
t 
 
 ^u-^N "v-^ 
 
 FLEET AS THE WIND MOUFFLOU DASHED THROUGH THE 
 ROOM." 
 
MOUFFLOU. 77 
 
 weak, indeed, even to wonder. He had Moufflon; 
 that was enough. 
 
 Alas ! though they dared not say so in his hearing, 
 it was not enough for his elders. His mother and 
 Tasso knew that the poodle had been sold and paid 
 for ; that they could lay no claim to keep him ; and 
 that almost certainly his purchaser would seek him 
 out and assert his indisputable right to him. And 
 then how would Lolo ever bear that second parting ? 
 — Lolo, so weak that he weighed no more than if he 
 had been a little bird. 
 
 Moufflon had, no doubt, travelled a long distance 
 and suffered much. He was but skin and bone ; he 
 bore the marks of blows and kicks ; his once silken 
 hair was all discoloured and matted ; he had, no 
 doubt, travelled far. But then his purchaser would 
 be sure to ask for him, soon or late, at his old home ; 
 and then ? Well, then if they did not give him up 
 themselves, the law would make them. 
 
 Rosina Calabucci and Tasso, though they dared say 
 nothing before any of the children, felt their hearts in 
 their mouths at every step on the stair, and the first 
 interrogation of Tasso every evening, when he came 
 from his work. Was, " Has any one come for Moufflon ? " 
 For ten days no one came, and their first terrors lulled 
 a little. 
 
 On the eleventh morning, a feast-day, on which 
 Tasso was not going to his labours in the Cascine, 
 there came a person, with a foreign look, who said 
 the words they so much dreaded to hear : " Has the 
 
78 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 poodle that you sold to an English gentleman come 
 back to you ? " 
 
 Yes ; his English master claimed him ! 
 
 The servant said that they had missed the dog in 
 Rome a few days after buying him and taking him 
 there ; that he had been searched for in vain, and 
 that his master had thought it possible the animal 
 might have found his way back to his old home ; 
 there had been stories of such wonderful sagacity in 
 dogs ; anyhow, he had sent for him on the chance ; 
 he was himself back on the Lung' Arno. The ser- 
 vant pulled from his pocket a chain, and said his 
 orders were to take the poodle away at once ; the 
 little sick gentleman had fretted very much about his 
 loss. 
 
 Tasso heard in a very agony of despair. To take 
 Moufflon away now would be to kill Lolo, — Lolo, so 
 feeble still, so unable to understand, so passionately 
 alive to every sight and sound of Moufflon, lying for 
 hours together motionless with his hand buried in the 
 poodle's curls, saying nothing, only smiling now and 
 then, and murmuring a word or two in Moufflon's ear. 
 
 " The dog did come home," said Tasso, at length, in 
 a low voice ; " angels must have shown him the road, 
 poor beast ! From Rome ! Only to think of it, from 
 Rome ! And he a dumb thing ! I tell you he is here, 
 honestly ; so will you not trust me just so far as this ? 
 Will you let me go with you and speak to the English 
 lord before you take the dog away ? I have a little 
 brother sorely ill — " 
 
MOUFFLOU. 79 
 
 He could not speak more, for tears that choked his 
 voice. 
 
 At last the messenger agreed so far as this. Tasso 
 might go first and see the master, but he would stay 
 here and have a care they did not spirit the dog away, 
 — " for a thousand francs were paid for him," added 
 the man, " and a dog that can come all the way from 
 Rome by itself must be an uncanny creature." 
 
 Tasso thanked him, went up-stairs, was thankful 
 that his mother was at mass and could not dispute 
 with him, took the ten hundred-franc notes from the 
 old oak cassone, and with them in his breast-pocket 
 walked out into the air. He was but a poor working 
 lad, but he had made up his mind to do an heroic 
 deed, for self-sacrifice is always heroic. He went 
 straightway to the hotel where the English milord was, 
 and when he had got there remembered that still he 
 did not know the name of Moufflon's owner ; but the 
 people of the hotel knew him as Rosina Calabucci's 
 son, and guessed what he wanted, and said the gentle- 
 man who had lost the poodle was within up-stairs and 
 they would tell him. 
 
 Tasso waited some half-hour with his heart beating 
 sorely against the packet of hundred-franc notes. At 
 last he was beckoned up-stairs, and there he saw a 
 foreigner with a mild fair face, and a very lovely lady, 
 and a delicate child who was lying on a couch. " Mouf- 
 flon ! Where is Moufflon ? " cried the little child, im- 
 patiently, as he saw the youth enter. 
 
 Tasso took his hat off, and stood in the doorway, 
 
80 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 an embrowned, healthy, not ungraceful figure, in his 
 working-clothes of rough blue stuff. 
 
 "If you please, most illustrious," he stammered, 
 " poor Moufflon has come home." 
 
 The child gave a cry of delight ; the gentleman and 
 lady one of wonder. Come home ! All the way from 
 Rome ! 
 
 " Yes, he has, most illustrious," said Tasso, gaining 
 courage and eloquence ; " and now I want to beg some- 
 thing of you. We are poor, and I drew a bad number, 
 and it was for that my mother sold Moufflou. For 
 myself, I did not know anything of it ; but she thought 
 she would buy my substitute, and of course she could ; 
 but Moufflou is come home, and my little brother Lolo, 
 the little boy your most illustrious first saw playing 
 with the poodle, fell ill of the grief of losing Mouf- 
 flon, and for a month has lain saying nothing sensible, 
 but only calling for the dog, and my old grandfather 
 died of worrying himself mad over the lottery num- 
 bers, and Lolo was so near dying that the Blessed Host 
 had been brought, and the holy oil had been put on 
 him, when all at once there rushes in Mouftlou, skin 
 and bone, and covered with mud, and at the sight of 
 him Lolo comes back to his senses, and that is now 
 ten days ago, and though Lolo is still as weak as a 
 new-born thing, he is always sensible, and takes what 
 we give him to eat, and lies always looking at Mouf- 
 flou, and smiling, and saying, ' Moufflou ! Moufflou ! ' 
 and, most illustrious, I know well you have bought the 
 dog, and the law is with you, and by the law you 
 
MOUFFLOU. 81 
 
 claim it ; but I thought perhaps, as Lolo loves him so, 
 you would let us keep the dog, and would take back 
 the thousand francs, and myself I will go and be a 
 soldier, and heaven will take care of them all some- 
 how." 
 
 Then Tasso, having said all this in one breathless, 
 monotonous recitative, took the thousand francs out 
 of his breast-pocket and held them out timidly toward 
 the foreign gentleman; who motioned them aside and 
 stood silent. 
 
 " Did you understand, Victor," he said, at last, to 
 his little son. 
 
 The child hid his face in his cushion. 
 
 " Yes, I did understand something : let Lolo keep 
 him ; Moufflon was not happy with me." 
 
 But he burst out crying as he said it. 
 
 Moufflon had run away from him. 
 
 Moufflon had never loved him, for all his sweet cakes 
 and fond caresses and platefuls of delicate savoury 
 meats. Moufflon had run away and found his own 
 road over two hundred miles and more to go back to 
 some little hungry children, who never had enough to 
 eat themselves, and so, certainly, could never give 
 enough to eat to the dog. Poor little boy! He was 
 so rich and so pampered and so powerful, and yet he 
 could never make Moufflon love him ! 
 
 Tasso, who understood nothing that was said, laid 
 the ten hundred-franc notes down on a table near him. 
 
 " If you would take them, most illustrious, and give 
 me back what my mother wrote when she sold Mouf- 
 
82 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 flou," he said, timidly, " I would pray for you night 
 and day, and Lolo would, too ; and as for the dog, we 
 will get a puppy and train him for your little signorino ; 
 they can all do tricks, more or less, it comes by nature ; 
 and as for me, I will go to the army willingly ; it is 
 not right to interfere with fate ; my old grandfather 
 died mad because he would try to be a rich man, by 
 dreaming about it and pulling destiny by the ears, as 
 if she were a kicking mule ; only, I do pray of you, 
 do not take away Moufflon. And to think he trotted 
 all those miles and miles, and you carried him by train, 
 too, and he never could have seen the road, and he has 
 no power of speech to ask — " 
 
 Tasso broke down again in his eloquence, and drew 
 the back of his hand across his wet eyelashes. 
 
 The English gentleman was not altogether un- 
 moved. 
 
 " Poor faithful dog ! " he said, with a sigh. " 1 am 
 afraid we were very cruel to him, meaning to be kind. 
 No ; we will not claim him, and I do not think you 
 should go for a soldier ; you seem so good a lad, and 
 your mother must need you. Keep the money, my 
 boy, and in payment you shall train up the puppy 
 you talk of, and bring him to my little boy. I will 
 come and see your mother and Lolo to-morrow. All 
 the way from Rome ! What wonderful sagacity ! what 
 matchless fidelity ! '^ 
 
 You can imagine, without any telling of mine, the 
 joy that reigned in Moufflon's home when Tasso re- 
 
MOUFFLOU, 83 
 
 turned thither with the money and the good tidings 
 both. His substitute was bought without a day's de- 
 lay, and Lolo rapidly recovered. As for Moufflon, he 
 could never tell them his troubles, his wanderings, his 
 difficulties, his perils; he could never tell them by 
 what miraculous knowledge he had found his way 
 across Italy, from the gates of Rome to the gates of 
 Florence. But he soon grew plump again, and 
 merry and his love for Lolo was yet greater than 
 before. 
 
 By the winter all the family went to live on an 
 estate near Spezia that the English gentleman had 
 purchased, and there Moufflon was happier than ever. 
 The little English boy is gaining strength in the soft 
 air, and he and Lolo are great friends, and play with 
 Moufflon and the poodle puppy half the day upon the 
 sunny terraces and under the green orange boughs. 
 Tasso is one of the gardeners there ; he will have to 
 serve as a soldier probably in some category or 
 another, but he is safe for the time, and is happy. 
 Lolo, whose lameness will always exempt him from 
 military service, when he grows to be a man means 
 to be a florist, and a great one. He has learned to 
 read, as the first step on the road of his ambition. 
 
 " But oh, Moufflon, how did you find your way 
 home ? " he asks the dog a hundred times a week. 
 
 How indeed ! 
 
 No one ever knew how Moufflon had made that 
 long journey on foot, so many weary miles ; but be- 
 yond a doubt he had done it alone and unaided, for if 
 
84 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 any one had helped him they would have come home 
 with him to claim the reward. 
 
 And that you may not wonder too greatly at Mouf- 
 flou's miraculous journey on his four bare feet, I will 
 add here two facts known to friends of mine, of 
 whose truthfulness there can be no doubt. 
 
 One concerns a French poodle who was purchased 
 in Paris by the friend of my friend, and brought all 
 the way from Paris to Milan by train. In a few days 
 after his arrival in Milan the poodle was missing ; 
 and nothing more was heard or known of him until 
 many weeks later his quondam owner in Paris, on 
 opening his door one morning, found the dog stretched 
 dying on the threshold of his old home. 
 
 That is one fact; not a story, mind you, a fact. 
 
 The other is related to me by an Italian nobleman, 
 who in his youth belonged to the Guardia Nobile of 
 Tuscany. That brilliant corps of elegant gentlemen 
 owned a regimental pet, a poodle also, a fine merry 
 and handsome dog of its kind ; and the officers all 
 loved and made much of him, except, alas ! the com- 
 mandant of the regiment, who hated him, because 
 when the officers were on parade or riding in escort 
 the poodle was sure to be jumping and frisking about 
 in front of them. It is difficult to see where the 
 harm of this was, but this odious old martinet vowed 
 vengeance against the dog, and, being of course all- 
 powerful in his own corps, ordered the exile from 
 Florence of the poor fellow. He was sent to a farm 
 at Prato, twenty miles off, along the hills ; but very 
 
MOUFFLOU. 85 
 
 soon he found his way back to Florence. He was 
 then sent to Leghorn, forty miles off, but in a week's 
 time had returned to his old comrades. He was 
 then, by order of his unrelenting foe, shipped to the 
 island of Sardinia. How he did it no one ever could 
 tell, for he was carried safely to Sardinia and placed 
 inland there in kind custody, but in some wonderful 
 way the poor dog must have found out the sea and 
 hidden himself on board a returning vessel, for in a 
 month's time from his exile to the island he was back 
 again among his comrades in Florence. Now, what 
 I have to tell you almost breaks my heart to say, and 
 will, I think, quite break yours to hear : alas ! the 
 brute of a commandant, untouched by such marvellous 
 cleverness and faithfulness, was his enemy to the 
 bitter end, and, in inexorable hatred, had Mm shot! 
 Oh, when you grow to manhood and have power, use 
 it with tenderness ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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