Gloomily Armando weighed the situation, standing by the mullioned window of the room wherein he had toiled so long and ignobly. Far in the western distance he could see the ships that seemed to glide with full sails across the mountains. The serene midsummer vapours, pendulous above the Mediterranean, were visible, but the sea upon which their shadows fell and lingered was hidden from his view by a thicket of silver firs. Southward the trees stood lower, and over their tops, where tired sea gulls circled, he gazed sadly toward the jumble of masonry that is Genoa.
Miles below in the sun glare the city lay this morning as Heine found it decades ago, like the bleached skeleton of some thrown-up monster of the deep. And a monster it was in the sight of the poor lad who looked down from the heights of Cardinali—but a monster that he would conquer, even as Saint George, champion of Genoa, had conquered the dragon in ages far agone. Yes, he would strike off for evermore the chains that fettered him to ten-inch Saint Peters, and mount to the white peaks of art! In the Apennine hamlet he had lived all his days, and never heard of Balzac; but he clinched his fist, and, with eyes set upon the cluster of chimney pots at the mountain’s foot, made his vow:
“In this room, O Genoa! will I bring forth a marble that shall make you do me honour.”
Then he felt uplifted—as though he had burned the bridges that hung between his old ignominy and the straight path to fame and riches. The vow was still fervid and strong within him when, two days afterward, he beheld in a shop window of Genoa a photograph of Falguière’s great marble, Juno and the Peacock. Before the divine contours of Jupiter’s helpmeet the simple-hearted graver of saintly images stood enchanted. Presently, as though spoken by a keen, mysterious voice from the upper air, there pierced his consciousness the word “Replica!” Again and again was it repeated, each time with a new insistence. Ah, a copy of this in marble! Yes; with such a masterpiece he would begin his ascent to the white peaks. He bought the photograph, put it in his pocket and kept it there until he was beyond the city’s bounds and trudging up the causeway toward Cardinali. Now and then he took out the picture, regarded it fondly, and, peering back at the town, asked himself if Genoa would look the same when his Juno and the Peacock should be there. Would the soft murmur of that drowsy mass have the same note? Would the people move with the same pace, eat, sleep, and drink as they had always done? He was inclined to think they would not.
Would Genoa be the same when his Juno and Peacock
should be there?
For a twelvemonth, through early tides and late shifts, he modelled and chipped: in winter, when the demoniac mistral, raging all about him, shook the workshop and snapped the boughs of the cypresses; in summer, when the ortolan and the wood-thrush cheered him with their song. And the little group of neighbours, from whom he guarded his great artistic secret, marvelled that no more Saint Peters came forth from their time-honoured birthplace.
Only two persons in Cardinali besides Armando had knowledge of the momentous affair that was going forward. One was Bertino, a fair-haired youth of the sculptor’s age, who busied his hands by day plaiting Lombardian straw into hats, and his head by night dreaming of America and showering cornucopias of gold. He was Armando’s bosom friend. The other confidant was Bertino’s foster sister Marianna, somewhat demure for a mountain lass, and subject to thinking spells. Beauty she had, notably on feast days, when she walked to church with a large-rayed comb in her braided chestnut waterfall, a gorgeous striped apron, and clattering half-sabots, freshly scraped and polished to a shine. She, too, plaited straw, and with it wove many love thoughts and sighs for Armando.
At last the stately goddess and her long-tailed companion stood triumphant in all the candour of marble not wholly spotless. The hour of unveiling it to the astonished gaze of Bertino and Marianna was the happiest that the ruler of Armando’s fate permitted him for many a day thereafter. The bitterness and crushing disillusion came on the day that he loaded the carved treasure on the donkey cart of Sebastiano the carrier, and followed Juno and the Peacock down the mountain pass to the haven of his sweet anticipation.
“He has been saving up his Saint Peters,” said Michele the Cobbler to a group of mystified neighbours as the cart passed his shop. “See, he has a box full of them. I wonder how many saints one can cut out in a year. Ah, well, it was not thus that his uncle Daniello did, nor his father before him. Shall I tell you what I think, my friends? Well, I think that boy is going wrong.”