DRAWING ON PRISON WALLS.
My poor mother, having been informed by the people of the shop, came to the Commissario, in the hope of obtaining my liberation, but she could not even obtain permission to see me. The only thing allowed to her was permission to bring me my dinner—that is, to give it to some one to bring in to me, all but the wine; and this she did. Oh, my sweet mother, may God grant thee the reward of thy love!
In the meantime the evening drew nigh; the walls were covered with my poor drawings, and my hands and face and handkerchief were all black. I would willingly have remained in prison till another day in order to finish a little less badly the Ferruccio; but to stay there for long hours in the dark, and with nothing to do, so irritated and disquieted me, that I began to cry out, and beat on the door, asking for a light at my own expense. But no one heeded me; and as I continued to drum loudly on the door, and had even taken the bench to hammer with, a voice different from the others called out to me, "Sir, for your own good I pray you to stop. The rules forbid lights; and if you go on in this way, I promise you that you shall sleep to-night in the Bargello." Never did so short a speech produce the desired effect like this. I hastened to answer that I would be absolutely quiet. I put back my bench in its place, and seated myself upon it, in the attitude perhaps of Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage; and there I remained until eleven o'clock at night. The door was then opened, and I was told to go to the Signor Commissario to thank him. This I did, and he repeated to me the sermon of the morning, and added that I owed to him the mildness of my sentence. I renewed my thanks to him, and ran home, where I found my mother and father awaiting me—he with a severe face, and she with tears in her eyes.
RELEASE FROM PRISON.
The day after, I went to the house of Marina—for I invented some sort of lie to explain why I had not come the day before, as I had promised—and taking aside Regina (as Marina had established a school in the house), I expressed to her my desire to be married as soon as possible. It was rather soon, I confess; but for me there was no other safety. With her—with my good Marina—I felt that I should cut short the too excited kind of life I was then leading, and which carried me into company and into gambling, and down that decline which leads every one knows where. That very evening I returned and insisted on acquainting the dear girl with my determination, at which she showed herself modestly happy. The true affection that I felt for that good creature, and the solemn pledge that I then took, put an absolute end to the thoughtless life which I had been leading. Stronger than ever came back to me my love for study, and I began to turn over in my mind how to occupy myself in marble work, even though it should be as a simple workman. At that time I made the acquaintance of Signor Luigi Magi, who was in the Studio Ricci, in Via S. Leopoldo, now Via Cavour, and I opened my mind to him, and he did not dissuade me from my purpose. But he advised me first to learn how to draw well and to model, and after going through a certain course of these studies, then to attempt to work in marble. He offered to procure for me copies to draw from; and then, as he intended to set up a studio for himself, he offered to give me lessons in modelling in clay. This being agreed upon, I returned home happy in the hope of carrying out this plan. But the many little things that I had to think of, and not the least of which was to save all the time I could in order to provide for the unusual expenses of my marriage, upset entirely for several months this ambitious project.
LITTLE ECONOMIES.
The ideas of wise economy which have up to the present time always accompanied me, I owe to my most excellent Marina. One day she said to me, "You make four pauls a-day, and two you spend on the house. What do you do with the other two?"
"I dress, buy cigars, and I don't know what else."
"See," she answered, "on your dress it is evident that you don't spend much; your cigars are a small matter; so it seems to me that you might put a part aside to supply what we most need."
MARINA—AND A POT OF VERBENA.