ingenuity of
composition, are nothing to him.... Did I not try in vain the
other day to make him understand that the old pieces of gilded
crystal used by our ancestors and a little tarnished by time,
were more favourable to colour than those manufactured to-day?"
"Indeed, you make a mistake, Messer Francesco," said he, "in
handing over to the Bianchini all the gold of modern manufacture.
The Commissioners have decided that the old will do mixed with
the new."... "But did I not in vain try to make him understand
that this brilliant gold would hurt the faces, and completely ruin
the effect of colour?"... The answer of the Procurator was, "The
Bianchini do not scruple to use it, and their mosaics please the
eye much better than yours," so his brother Valerio, laughing,
asks, "What need of worrying yourself after such a decision as
that? Suppress the shadows, cut a breadth of material from a great
plate of enamel and lay it over the breast of St. Nicaise, render
St. Cecilia's beautiful hair with a badly cut tile, a pretty lamb
for St. John the Baptist, and the Commission will double your salary
and the public clap its hands. Really, my brother, you who dream
of glory, I do not understand how you can pledge yourself to the
worship of art." "I dream of glory, it is true," replied Francesco,
"but of a glory that is lasting, not the vain popularity of a day.
I should like to leave an honoured name, if not an illustrious
one, and make those who examine the cupolas of St. Mark's five
hundred years hence say, 'This was the work of a conscientious
artist.'" A description follows of the scene of the mosaic workers
pursuing their calling. "Here was heard abusive language, there
the joyous song; further on, the jest; above, the hammer: below,
the trowel: now the dull and continuous thud of the tampon on the
mosaics, and anon the clear and crystal like clicking of the glassware
rolling from the baskets on to the pavement, in waves of rubies and
emeralds. Then the fearful grating of the scraper on the cornice,
and finally the sharp rasping cry of the saw in the marble, to say
nothing of the low masses said at the end of the chapel in spite
of the racket."

[Illustration: MOSAIC IN BAS-RELIEF, NAPLES]

The Zuccati were very independent skilled workmen, as well as being
able to design their own subjects. They were, in the judgment of
Georges Sand, superior to another of the masters in charge of the
works, Bozza, who was less of a man