“I wish I had as much,” moaned the Signora Pandolfi, lapsing into hesitation.

“Come, mamma, I will decide for you,” said Lucia.  “We will go and find Uncle Paolo, and we will do exactly as he advises.”

“After all, that is best,” assented her mother, rising slowly from her seat.

Half an hour later they left the house upon their errand, but they did not enter the workshop on their way.  Indeed, if they had, they would have been surprised to find that Marzio was not there, and that Gianbattista was consequently not talking to him as Lucia had supposed.

When Gianbattista reached the workshop, he was told that Marzio had only remained five minutes, and had gone away so soon as everybody was at work.  He hesitated a moment, wondering whether he might not go home again and spend another hour in Lucia’s company; but it was not possible to foretell whether Marzio would be absent during the whole morning, and Gianbattista decided to remain.  Moreover, the peculiar smell of the studio brought with it the idea of work, and with the idea came the love of the art, not equal, perhaps, to the love of the woman but more familiar from the force of habit.

All men feel such impressions, and most of all those who follow a fixed calling, and are accustomed to do their work in a certain place every day.  Theophile Gautier confessed in his latter days that he could not work except in the office of the Moniteur—­elsewhere, he said, he missed the smell of the printers’ ink, which brought him ideas.  Artists know well the effect of the atmosphere of the studio.  Five minutes of that paint-laden air suffice to make the outer world a mere dream, and to recall the reality of work.  There was an old dressing-gown to which Thackeray was attached as to a friend, and which he believed indispensable to composition.  Balzac had his oval writing-room, when he grew rich, and the creamy white colour of the tapestries played a great part in his thoughts.  The blacksmith loves the smoke of the forge and the fumes of hot iron on the anvil, and the chiseller’s fingers burn to handle the tools that are strewn on the wooden bench.

Gianbattista stood at the door of the studio, and had he been master instead of apprentice, he could not have resisted the desire to go to his place and take up the work he had left on the previous evening.  In a few minutes he was hammering away as busily as though there were no such thing as marriage in the world, and nothing worth living for but the chiselling of beautiful arabesques on a silver ewer.  His head was bent over his hands, his eyes followed intently the smallest movements of the tool he held, he forgot everything else, and became wholly absorbed in his occupation.