"Babbo! Babbo! we's helping 'oo!"
"Helping indeed!" His eyes roved over the devastated canvas, on which were spread the ruins of his labour of love and a blind fury gripped him.
"Accidento a voi!" he yelled, and the children shrank from his blazing eyes and congested face. He seized the two small culprits by their Van Dyck collars and dragged them over to the side of the room where the armour was. The children, too frightened to cry, struggled, but he held them easily with his left hand while he looked about him for an instrument of punishment; seeing a foil in the rack, he took it down. The first blow brought an agonized scream from both boys, a scream that Carolina heard in the dining-room, where she had just finished laying the table for their goûter; and that brought her breathless and with flying feet to the studio door. There she stood a second, horrified by the sight that met her eyes. Egidio, his face distorted like that of a fiend, stood slashing at the children indiscriminately and mercilessly; the poor little things had put up their arms instinctively to shield their faces, and each whistling stroke wrung from them a fresh scream, as it descended. Mimmo's golden curls tossed wildly as he shook in the grasp of the madman—for Egidio at that moment was mad—his lace collar was torn, and on his poor little wrist were cruel marks from which red drops trickled. Being the bigger of the two he partially masked Beppino.
Carolina paused but for the taking in of a breath, then she sprang forward and seized in mid-air the hand wielding the foil. Egidio turned on her with a snarl, infuriated by the interruption.
"Go, woman!" he yelled, "how dare you come here?"
"Stop it!" she answered, "let the children go!"
"I shall punish them as I see fit, I—their father. They have ruined my work, do you hear? My work of weeks! Look!"
She glanced at the portrait and saw that it was smeared but her untutored mind could not grasp the extent of the disaster. The sight of it maddened Valentini again and he made an effort to wrench his hand from her hold.
"Signore," she pleaded, "remember that they are little, they are only babies, they did not know."
"Little are they? They are big enough to ruin my work! Dio santo, they shall smart for it!"