Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/267

Rh and takes much skill in the mixing of colours. Now I pray you to show me a touch of your art. I thank you, Tita! The Venetian glasses, cara mia, and fill them to the brim. A seat, signor!'

While Ford, in his English-French, was conversing with Tita in her Italian-French, the old man was carefully examining his precious head to see that no scratch had been left upon its surface. When he glanced up again, Alleyne had, with a few bold strokes of the brush, tinted in a woman's face and neck upon the white sheet in front of him.

'Diavolo!' exclaimed the old artist, standing with his head on one side, 'you have power; yes, cospetto! you have power. It is the face of an angel!'

'It is the face of the Lady Maude Loring!' cried Ford, even more astonished.

'Why, on my faith, it is not unlike her!' said Alleyne, in some confusion.

'Ah! a portrait! So much the better. Young man, I am Agostino Pisano, the son of, and I say again that you have power. Further, I say that, if you will stay with me, I will teach you all the secrets of the glass-stainers' mystery: the pigments and their thickening, which will fuse into the glass and which will not, the furnace and the glazing—every trick and method you shall know.'

'I would be right glad to study under such a master,' said Alleyne; 'but I am sworn to follow my lord while this war lasts.'

'War! war!' cries the old Italian. 'Ever this talk of war. And the men that you hold to be great—what are they? Have I not heard their names? Soldiers, butchers, destroyers! Ah, per Baccho! we have men in Italy who are in very truth great. You pull down, you despoil; but they build up, they restore. Ah, if you could but see my own dear Pisa, the duomo, the cloisters of Campo Santo, the high campanile, with the mellow throb of her bells upon the warm Italian air! Those are the works of great men. And I have seen them with my own eyes, these very eyes