|After breakfast next morning, Sam rose resolutely from the table,
like a man who means business, and said to his brother in a tone of
authority, 'Come along, Colin; I'm going to call on this Mr. Maragliano
you were telling me about.'
'But, Sam,' Colin expostulated, 'he won't receive us. We haven't got any
introduction or anything.'
'Not got any introduction? Yes, I guess we have, Colin. Just you bring
along those drawings and designs you showed us last night, and you bet
Mr. Maragliano won't want any other introduction, I promise you. In
America, we'd rather see what a man can do, any day, than what all
his friends put together can say to crack him up in a letter of
recommendation.'
Colin ran upstairs trembling with excitement, and brought down the big
portfolio--Minna's portfolio, made with cloth and cardboard by her own
small fingers, and containing all his most precious sketches for
statues or bas-reliefs. They turned out into the new Rome of the English
quarter, and following the directions of the porter, they plunged at
last into the narrow alleys down by the Tiber till they came to the
entrance of a small and gloomy-looking street, the Via Colonna. It is
the headquarters of the native Italian artists. Colin's heart beat fast
when at length they stopped at a large house on the left-hand side and
entered the studio of Nicola Maragliano.
The great sculptor was standing in the midst of a group of friends and
admirers, his loose coat all covered with daubs of clay, and his shaggy
hair standing like a mane around him, when Sam and Colin were ushered
into his studio. Colin stood still for a moment, awestruck at the great
man's leonine presence; for Maragliano was one of the very few geniuses
whose outer shape corresponded in majesty to the soul within him.
[Illustration: 0152]
But Sam, completely unabashed by the novelty of the situation, walked
straight up to the famous artist, and said with a rapid jerk in his own
natural, easy-going manner, 'Speak any English?'
'A leetle,' Maragliano answered, smiling at the brusqueness of the
interrogation.
'Then what we want to know, sir, without wasting any time over it, is
just this: Here's my brother. He wants to be made into a sculptor.
Will you take him for a pupil, and if so, what'll your charge be? He's
brought some of his drawings along, for you to look at them. Will you
see them?'
Maragliano smiled again, this time showing all his white teeth, and
looked with an air of much amusement at Colin. The poor fellow was
blushing violently, and Maragliano saw that he was annoyed and hurt by
Sam's brusqueness. So he took the portfolio with a friendly gesture (for
he was a true gentleman), and proceeded to lay it down upon his little
side-table. 'Let us see,' he said in Italian, 'what the young American
has got to show me.'
'Not American,' Colin answered, in Italian too. 'I am English; but my
brother has lived long in America, and has perhaps picked up American
habits.'
Maragliano looked at him keenly again, nodded, and said nothing. Then he
opened the portfolio and took out the first drawing. It was the design
for the Cephalus and Aurora--the new and amended version. As the great
sculptor's eye fell upon the group, he started and gave a little cry
of suppressed astonishment. Then he looked once more at Colin, but said
nothing. Colin trembled violently. Maragliano turned over the leaf, and
came to the sketch for the bas-relief of the Boar of Calydon. Again
he gave a little start, and murmured to himself, 'Corpo di Bacco!' but
still said nothing to the tremulous aspirant. So he worked through the
whole lot, examining each separate drawing carefully, and paying keener
and keener attention to each as he recognised instinctively their
profound merit. At last, he came to the group of Orestes and the
Eumenides. It was Colin Churchill's finest drawing, and the marble group
produced from it is even now one of the grandest works that ever came
out of that marvellous studio. Maragliano gave a sharper and shorter
little cry than ever.
'You made it?' he asked, turning to Colin.
Colin nodded in deep suspense, not unmixed with a certain glorious
premonition of assured triumph.
Maragliano turned to the little group, that stood aloof around the clay
of the Calabrian Peasant, and called out, 'Bazzoni!'
'Master!'
'See this design. It is the Englishman's. What think you of it?'
The scholar took it up and looked at it narrowly. 'Good;' he
said shortly, in an Italian crescendo;
'excellent--admirable--surprising--extraordinary.'
Maragliano drew his finger over the curve of the Orestes' figure with
a sort of free sweep, like a sculptor's fancy, and answered simply,
turning to Colin, 'He says true. It is the touch of genius.'
As Maragliano said those words, Colin felt the universe reeling wildly
around him, and clutched at Sam's arm for support from falling. Sam
didn't understand the Italian, but he saw from Colin's face that the
tremor was excess of joy, not shock of disappointment. 'Well,' he said
inquiringly to Maragliano. 'You like his drawings? You'll take him for a
pupil? You'll make a sculptor of him?'
'No,' Maragliano answered in English, holding up the Orestes admiringly
before him; 'I cannot do zat. Ze great God has done so already.'
Sam smiled a smile of brotherly triumph. 'I thought so, Colin,' he said
approvingly.
'I told him so last night, Mr. Maragliano. You see, I'm in the artistic
business myself, though in another department--the advertising block
trade--and I know artistic work when I look at it.'
Maragliano showed his white teeth once more, but didn't answer.
'And what'll your terms be for taking him?' Sam asked, in as
business-like a fashion as if the famous sculptor had been a flourishing
greengrocer, or a respectable purveyor of kippered herrings.
Maragliano glanced around him with a nervous glance. 'Zere are many
people here,' he said, shrugging his shoulders. 'We cannot talk at
leisure. Let us go into my private chamber.' And he led the way into a
small parlour behind the studio.
Sam took a chair at once with republican promptitude, but Colin stood,
his hands folded before him, still abashed by the great man's presence.
Maragliano looked at him once more with his keenly interested look.
'That is well,' he said in Italian. 'Greatness always pays the highest
homage to greatness. I know a true artist at sight by the way he first
approaches me. Rich men condescend; pretenders fawn; ordinary men
recognise no superiority save rank or money; but greatness shows
its innate reverence at once, and thereby securely earns its own
recognition. Be seated, I pray you. Your drawings are wonderful; but
you have studied little. They are full of genuine native power, but
they lack precise artistic teaching. Where have you taken your first
lessons?'
'Nowhere,' Colin answered, his face glowing with pleasure at
Maragliano's hearty encomium. 'I am almost entirely self-taught, and I
have come to Rome to learn better.'
Maragliano listened intently. 'Wonderful!' he said; 'wonderful, truly!
And yet, I could almost have guessed it. Your work is all vigour and
nature--it is Greek, purely Greek--but there is not yet art in it. Tell
me all about how you have learned what you know of sculpture.'
Thus invited, Cohn began, and confided to the great sculptor's
sympathetic ear the whole story of his youth and boyhood. He began with
the time when he moulded little clay images for Minna from the bank
at Wootton Mandeville; and he went on with all the story of his
acquaintance with Cicolari, down to his coming to Rome with Sir Henry
Wilberforce. Maragliano nodded his interest from time to time, and
when Colin had finished, he took his hand warmly in his, and cried in
English, so that Sam too understood him: 'It is well. You shall be my
pupil.'
'And your terms?' Sam asked with mercantile insistence. 'We're ready to
agree to anything reasonable.'
'Are nossing,' Maragliano answered; 'nossing, nossing. I will teach
you for ze love of art, as you will learn for it. No, no,' he went
on, breaking into Italian again, as Colin tried to thank him or to
expostulate with him. 'You needn't thank me. It is but the repayment of
a debt. I owe it to your own Gibson, as Gibson owed it before to Canova.
It is a tradition among us Roman sculptors; you will keep it up, and
will repay it in due time hereafter to some future follower. Many years
ago I came to Rome. I was an unknown lad from Genoa. I came as a model
to Gibson's studio. I sat for an Antinous. Gibson saw me modelling
little bits of clay for amusement in my off times, and said to me, “You
would make a sculptor.” I laughed. He gave me a little clay, and saw
what I could do; I modelled a head after his Venus. Then he took me on
as his pupil; and now--I am Nicola Maragliano. I am glad to repay an
Englishman the debt I owe to the illustrious Gibson. You must take my
lessons, as I took his, in trust for art, and not talk between brother
artists about such dirt as money.'
Colin seized his hand eagerly. 'Oh, sir,' he cried in English, 'you are
too noble, too generous. I shall never be able sufficiently to thank
you. If you will only condescend to give me instruction--to make me your
pupil--to let me model in your studio, I shall be eternally grateful to
you for such unexpected kindness.'
Maragliano wrung the young man's hand with a kindly fervour. 'That is
more than enough already,' he answered. 'Those who love art are all of
one family. When will you come to the studio? Let me see; you have not
been long in Rome?'
'We've only just come here,' put in Sam, proud of having caught the
meaning of the Italian.
'Ah, well; then you will want a little time, no doubt, to look about and
see the sights of Rome. What do you say to Tuesday fortnight?'
'If it's equally convenient for you, signor,' Colin answered, all aglow,
'I shall be at the studio to-morrow morning.'
Maragliano patted him gently on the head as though he were a child. 'My
friend,' he said, 'you speak courageously. That is the sentiment of all
true artists. You are impatient to get to work; you will not need a long
apprenticeship. Let it be so then. Tomorrow morning.'