Medici to be the primrose path
that leads to everlasting fire--they probably would if they had ever
heard of Camille. She told them she had found lessons, and the wolf
seemed to skulk growlingly away from the door as she uttered the
words.

"You need not be afraid of the baker now," she told Ser Giulia. "He
shall be paid at the end of the week."

Her waking on the Monday morning was the happiest she had known since
she left Florence. She was to help to make beautiful things. Her part
would be passive; but they also serve who only stand and wait. She was
not of those who see degradation in the lesser forms of labour. Each
worker is needed to make the perfect whole. The men who wrought the
gold knots and knops of the sanctuary, who wove the veil for the Holy
of Holies, were called great, but the hewers of wood and carriers of
water were temple builders too, even though their part was but to
raise up scaffoldings that must come down again, or to mix the mortar
that is unseen though it should weld the whole. Men might pass these
toilers by in silence, but God would surely praise them.

Praxiteles moulded a goddess in clay, and we still acclaim him after
the lapse of some two thousand years. What of the woman who wearied
and ached that his eyes might not fail to learn the least sweet curve
of her? What of the patient craftsmen who hewed out the block of
marble, whose eyes were inflamed, whose lungs were scarred by the
white dust of it? They suffered for beauty's sake--not, as some might
say, because they must eat and live. Even slaves might get bread by
easier ways. But, very simply for beauty's sake.

Olive might have soon learnt how vile such service may be in the
studios of any of the _canaglia_ poor Rosina knew, but Camille, that
sheep in wolf's clothing, was safe enough. What there was in him of
perversity, of brute force, he expended in the portrayal of his subtly
beautiful furies. His art was feverishly decadent, and those who judge
a man by his work might suppose him to be a monster of iniquity. He
was, in fact, an extremely clever and rather worldly-wise boy who
loved violets and stone-pines and moonlight with poetical fervour, who
preferred milk to champagne, and saunterings in green fields to
gambling on green cloth.

That February morning was cloudless, and Rome on her seven hills was
flooded in sunshine. The birds were singing in the ilex wood as Olive
passed through, and Camille was singing too in his _a