“And with that income you live here?”
“You have eyes for only the income, not the expenses. Every month I have to send thirty duros to my family, so that my mother and sister can exist. The litigation costs me fifteen to twenty duros per month, and with the rest I manage to get along.”
Manuel contemplated Roberto with profound admiration.
“Why, my boy,” exclaimed Roberto, “there’s no help for it if a fellow is to live. And that’s what you ought to do,—hunt, ask, run around, look high and low. You’ll find something.”
It seemed to Manuel that even were the promise of kingship held out to him, he would be unable to bestir himself so actively, but he kept silence.
He waited for the sculptor to get up and the two exchanged impressions as to life’s difficulties.
“See here. For the present you work for me as a model,” said Alex, “and we’ll manage to find some arrangement that will assure us food.”
“Very well, sir. As you please.”
Alex had credit at the bakery and the grocer’s, and calculated that Manuel’s board would cost him less than a model would ask for services. The two decided to feed upon bread and preserves.
The sculptor was by no means a lazy fellow but he lacked persistence in his work and was not master of his art; he was never able to bring his figures to completion, and noting, as he attacked the details of the modelling, that the defects stood out more prominently than ever, he would leave them unfinished. Then his pride induced in him the belief that the exact modelling of an arm or a leg was an unworthy, decadent labor; in which his friends, who were afflicted with the same impotency of artistic effort, agreed with him.