doctrines, and a whole vocabulary of terms by which to describe the
ideal state after which he hankered. But though he did not possess a
logic of his own, his life was itself the logical result of the
circumstances he had created. As, in the diagram called the
parallelogram of forces, various conflicting powers are seen to act at a
point, producing an inevitable resultant in a fixed line, so in the plan
of Marzio's life, a number of different tendencies all acted at a
centre, in his overstrained intelligence, and continued to push him in a
direction he had not expected to follow, and of which even now he was
far from suspecting the ultimate termination.

He had never loved his brother, but he had loved his wife with all his
heart. He had begun to love Lucia when she was a child. He had felt a
sort of admiring fondness for Gianbattista Bordogni, and a decided pride
in the progress and the talent of the apprentice. By degrees, as the
prime mover, his hatred for Paolo, gained force, it had absorbed his
affection for Maria Luisa, who, after eighteen years of irreproachable
wifehood, seemed to Marzio to be nothing better than an accomplice and a
spy of his brother's in the domestic warfare. Next, the lingering love
for his child had been eaten up in the same way, and Marzio said to
himself that the girl had joined the enemy, and was no longer worthy of
his confidence. Lastly, the change in Gianbattista's character and ideas
seemed to destroy the last link which bound the chiseller to his family.
Henceforth, his hand was against each one of his household, and he
fancied that they were all banded together against himself.

Every step had followed as the inevitable consequence of what had gone
before. The brooding and suspicious nature of the artist had persisted
in seeing in each change in himself the blackest treachery in those who
surrounded him. His wife was an implacable enemy, his daughter a spy,