We shall now for the present leave Piedro to his follies and his fate; or, to speak more properly, to his follies and their inevitable consequences.
Francisco was all this time acquiring knowledge from his new friends, without neglecting his own or his father’s business. He contrived, during the course of autumn and winter, to make himself a tolerable arithmetician. Carlo’s father could draw plans in architecture neatly; and pleased with the eagerness Francisco showed to receive instruction, he willingly put a pencil and compasses into his hand, and taught him all he knew himself. Francisco had great perseverance, and, by repeated trials, he at length succeeded in copying exactly all the plans which his master lent him. His copies, in time, surpassed the originals, and Carlo exclaimed, with astonishment: “Why, Francisco, what an astonishing genius you have for drawing!—Absolutely you draw plans better than my father!”
“As to genius,” said Francisco, honestly, “I have none. All that I have done has been done by hard labour. I don’t know how other people do things; but I am sure that I never have been able to get anything done well but by patience. Don’t you remember, Carlo, how you and even Rosetta laughed at me the first time your father put a pencil into my awkward, clumsy hands?”
“Because,” said Carlo, laughing again at the recollection, “you held your pencil so drolly; and when you were to cut it, you cut it just as if you were using a pruning-knife to your vines; but now it is your turn to laugh, for you surpass us all. And the times are changed since I set about to explain this rule of mine to you.”
“Ay, that rule,” said Francisco—“how much I owe to it! Some great people, when they lose any of their fine things, cause the crier to promise a reward of so much money to anyone who shall find and restore their trinket. How richly have you and your father rewarded me for returning this rule!”
Francisco’s modesty and gratitude, as they were perfectly sincere, attached his friends to him most powerfully; but there was one person who regretted our hero’s frequent absences from his vineyard at Resina. Not Francisco’s father, for he was well satisfied his son never neglected his business; and as to the hours spent in Naples, he had so much confidence in Francisco that he felt no apprehensions of his getting into bad company. When his son had once said to him, “I spend my time at such a place, and in such and such a manner,” he was as well convinced of its being so as if he had watched and seen him every moment of the day. But it was Arthur who complained of Francisco’s absence.
“I see, because I am an Englishman,” said he, “you don’t value my friendship, and yet that is the very reason you ought to value it; no friends so good as the English, be it spoken without offence to your Italian friend, for whom you now continually leave me to dodge up and down here in Resina, without a soul that I like to speak to, for you are the only Italian I ever liked.”
“You shall like another, I promise you,” said Francisco. “You must come with me to Carlo’s, and see how I spend my evenings; then complain of me, if you can.”
It was the utmost stretch of Arthur’s complaisance to pay this visit; but, in spite of his national prejudices and habitual reserve of temper, he was pleased with the reception he met with from the generous Carlo and the playful Rosetta. They showed him Francisco’s drawings with enthusiastic eagerness; and Arthur, though no great judge of drawing, was in astonishment, and frequently repeated, “I know a gentleman who visits my master who would like these things. I wish I might have them to show him.”
“Take them, then,” said Carlo; “I wish all Naples could see them, provided they might be liked half as well as I like them.”