While the milliners of the Grifoni establishment were industriously shaping dresses, the sculptors in Luca Lomi’s workshop were, in their way, quite as hard at work shaping marble and clay.  In the smaller of the two rooms the young nobleman (only addressed in the studio by his Christian name of Fabio) was busily engaged on his bust, with Nanina sitting before him as a model.  His was not one of those traditional Italian faces from which subtlety and suspicion are always supposed to look out darkly on the world at large.  Both countenance and expression proclaimed his character frankly and freely to all who saw him.  Quick intelligence looked brightly from his eyes; and easy good humor laughed out pleasantly in the rather quaint curve of his lips.  For the rest, his face expressed the defects as well as the merits of his character, showing that he wanted resolution and perseverance just as plainly as it showed also that he possessed amiability and intelligence.

At the end of the large room, nearest to the street door, Luca Lomi was standing by his life-size statue of Minerva; and was issuing directions, from time to time, to some of his workmen, who were roughly chiseling the drapery of another figure.  At the opposite side of the room, nearest to the partition, his brother, Father Rocco, was taking a cast from a statuette of the Madonna; while Maddalena Lomi, the sculptor’s daughter, released from sitting for Minerva’s face, walked about the two rooms, and watched what was going on in them.

There was a strong family likeness of a certain kind between father, brother and daughter.  All three were tall, handsome, dark-haired, and dark-eyed; nevertheless, they differed in expression, strikingly as they resembled one another in feature.  Maddalena Lomi’s face betrayed strong passions, but not an ungenerous nature.  Her father, with the same indications of a violent temper, had some sinister lines about his mouth and forehead which suggested anything rather than an open disposition.  Father Rocco’s countenance, on the other hand, looked like the personification of absolute calmness and invincible moderation; and his manner, which, in a very firm way, was singularly quiet and deliberate, assisted in carrying out the impression produced by his face.  The daughter seemed as if she could fly into a passion at a moment’s notice, and forgive also at a moment’s notice.  The father, appearing to be just as irritable, had something in his face which said, as plainly as if in words, “Anger me, and I never pardon.”  The priest looked as if he need never be called on either to ask forgiveness or to grant it, for the double reason that he could irritate nobody else, and that nobody else could irritate him.

“Rocco,” said Luca, looking at the face of his Minerva, which was now finished, “this statue of mine will make a sensation.”

“I am glad to hear it,” rejoined the priest, dryly