another. Who was this nameless rival? There were but ten of
themselves.

"Ho, there!" repeated Signor Benedetto, getting angry. "Cannot you
find a tongue, I say? Who has wrought this work? Silence is but
insolence to his highness and to me!"

Then the child Sanzio loosened his little hand from his father's
hold, and went forward, and stood before the master-potter.

"I painted it," he said, with a pleased smile; "I, Raffaelle."

Can you not fancy, without telling, the confusion, the wonder, the
rapture, the incredulity, the questions, the wild ecstasy of
praise, that followed on the discovery of the child artist? Only
the presence of Guidobaldo kept it in anything like decent
quietude, and even he, all duke though he was, felt his eyes wet
and felt his heart swell; for he himself was childless, and for
the joy that Giovanni Sanzio felt that day he would have given his
patrimony and duchy.

He took a jewel hung on a gold chain from his own breast and threw
it over Raffaelle's shoulders.

"There is your first guerdon," he said; "you will have many, O
wondrous child, who shall live when we are dust!"

Raffaelle, who himself was all the while quite tranquil and
unmoved, kissed the duke's hand with sweetest grace, then turned
to his own father.