“Our landlord drew nearer to the table, sat down, and, with a humorous nod toward Louis, began:
“You must all remember I was an impressionable young fellow at the time, full of daredevil, romantic ideas, and, like most young fellows, saw only the end in view without caring a sou about the means by which I reached it.
“I found the bas-relief, as I have told you, in a small chapel outside of Ravenna—one of those deep-toned interiors lighted by dust-begrimed windows, the roof supported by rows of marble columns. The altar, which was low and of simple design, was placed at the top of a wide flight of three rose-marble steps over which swung a huge brass lamp burning a ruby light. With the exception of an old woman asleep on her knees before a figure of the Virgin, I was the only person in the building. I had already seen dozens of such interiors, all more or less alike, and after walking around it once or twice was about to leave by a side door protected by a heavy clay-soiled red curtain when my eye fell on the original of the caste above you, the figures and surrounding panel being built into the masonry of the altar, a position it had occupied, no doubt, since the days of Michael Angelo.
“For half an hour I stood before it—worshipping it, really. The longer I looked the more I wanted something to take away with me that would keep it alive in my memory. I drew a little, of course, and had my sketch-book filled, student-like, with bits of architecture, peasants, horses, and things I came across every day; but I knew I could never reproduce the angelic smile on the Madonna’s face, and that was the one thing that made it greater than all the bas-reliefs I had seen in all my wanderings. Then it suddenly occurred to me—there being no photographs in those days: none you could buy of a thing like this—that perhaps I could get some one in the village to make a caste, the Italians being experts at this work. While I was leaning over the rose-marble rail drinking it in, a door opened somewhere behind the altar and an old priest came slowly toward me.
“‘It is very lovely, holy father,’ I said, in an effort to open up a conversation which might lead somewhere.
“‘Yes!’ he replied curtly; ‘but love it on your knees.’
“So down I got, and there I stayed until he had finished his prayer at one of the side chapels and had left the church by the main door.
“All this time I was measuring it with my eye—its width, thickness, the depth of the cutting, how much plaster it would take, how large a bag it would require in which to carry it away. This done I went back to Ravenna and started to look up some one of the image vendors who haunt the door of the great church.
“But none of them would listen. It would take at least an hour before the plaster would be dry enough to come away from the marble. The priests—poor as some of them were—would never consent to such a sacrilege. Without their permission detection was almost certain; so please go to the devil, illustrious signore, and do not tempt a poor man who does not wish to go to prison for twenty lira.
“This talk, let me tell you, took place in a shop up a back street, kept by a young Italian image-vendor who made casts and moulds with the assistance of his father, who was a hunch-back, and an old man all rags whom I could see was listening to every word of the talk.