sort of nervous irritability which acts as a stimulant upon the
faculties, and makes them work faster. With Marzio this unnatural state
was chronic, and had become so because he had given himself up to it. It
is a common disease in cities, where a man is forced to associate with
his fellow-men, and to compete with them, whether he is naturally
inclined to do so or not. If Marzio could have exercised his art while
living as a hermit on the top of a lonely mountain he might have been a
much better man.

He almost understood this himself as he walked slowly through the Via
delle Botteghe Oscure--"the street of dark shops"--in the early
morning. He was thinking of the crucifix he was to make, and the
interest he felt in it made him dread the consequences of the previous
night's domestic wrangling. He wanted to be alone, and at the same time
he wanted to see places and things which should suggest thoughts to him.
He did not care whither he went so long as he kept out of the new Rome.
When he reached the little garden in front of San Marco he paused,
looked at the deep doorway of the church, remembered the barbarous
mosaics within, and turned impatiently into a narrow street on the
right--the beginning of the Via di Marforio.

The network of by-ways in this place is full of old-time memories. Here
is the Via Giulio Romano, where the painter himself once lived; here is
the Macel dei Corvi, where Michael Angelo once lodged; hard by stood the
statue of Marforio, christened by the mediæval Romans after _Martis
Forum_, and famous as the interlocutor of Pasquino. The place was a
centre of artists and scholars in those days. Many a simple question was
framed here, to fit the two-edged biting answer, repeated from mouth to
mouth, and carefully written down among Pasquino's epigrams. First of
all the low-born Roman hates all that is, and his next thought is to