pottery of the duchy!

How glad he was, and how his little heart bounded and seemed to
sing in this his first enjoyment of the joyous liberties and
powers of creative work!

A well-known writer has said that genius is the power of taking
pains; he should have said rather that genius HAS this power also,
but that first and foremost it possesses the power of spontaneous
and exquisite production without effort and with delight.

Luca looked at him (not at his work, for the child had made him
promise not to do so) and began to marvel at his absorption, his
intentness, the evident facility with which he worked: the little
figure leaning over the great dish on the bare board of the table,
with the oval opening of the window and the blue sky beyond it,
began to grow sacred to him with more than the sanctity of
childhood. Raffaelle's face grew very serious, too, and lost its
color, and his large hazel eyes looked very big and grave and
dark.

"Perhaps Signer Giovanni will be angry with me if ever he knows,"
thought poor Luca; but it was too late to alter anything now. The
child Sanzio had become his master.

So Raffaelle, unknown to any one else, worked on and on there in
the attic while the tulips bloomed and withered, and the
honeysuckle was in flower in the hedges, and the wheat and barley
were being cut in the quiet fields lying far down below in the
sunshine. For midsummer was come; the three months all but a week