The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1900-08-11

gether to write. Pietro had been wait
ing and watching and counting the
days for the letter which she owed.
Weeks went by, then months, and no
word came to tighten his labors and
his loneliness. The first sharp pain of
disappointment gave way to a long,
dull, ceaseless agony that filled his
heart to the brim and made it throb
wildly at times within the tender
walls. Oh, beloved Beatricia," he
would cry out in the wakeful watches
of the long night, have o forgotten
your Pietro?"
The plaster Venuses and Mercurys
and Sacred Marys stood side by side
along the shelves of his shop, gazing
down on him from their classic gran
deur with cold. Implying eyes. Some
times at night he thought that he saw
the imperious Milo shake her head dis
painfully when he cried aloud. Mer-
curry sneeTed, and a dimpled Cupid's
head, by PraXiteles, broke into amused
rstrth. Once in his grief he knelt be-
fore a Mary, which he had himself
illOlAlAt nav NNIS way anu III III dS Gu
wildly and despairingly, and, as if in
compassion, it seemed to him that the
sacred lips of the image moved to
intercede.
He lived alone. Others in Little
Italy" sought O know him and draw
him out OF himself. He was a hand
some youth, perhaps % years of age.
49, ,r,,,, - ~, N,,,,;,,,, I@,, .,--
Italian girls cast amorOus chances ut
him. He did not even notice them. He
looked far beyond them and saw a
little dark-eyed girl, with a clear,
white, transparent skin, more beauti-
full than the day-a cameo with but
the merest blush of pink.
He no goOda, he no gooda," shout
ed the mob of merrymakers, tossing
back their heads in unbridled, mock
ing laughter. They would look at one
another when he passed silently, and
then raise their eyebrows significantly
and smile with knowing. conclusive
smiles as they touched their foreheads
with a finger.
Pietro scarcely knew of their pres
ence. He used to hear their uproar-
ious laughter, but it did not attract
him. He had no respect for them.
Many were but provincial horn, and
be, why, he, Pietro Gonzales, had been
born in Rome itself. above the shop
where Gonzales the elder had chiseled
the heads of prelates of the Vatican
from the finely veined, dazzling white
ribs of marble from Italy's own hills
and had beer a true artist in his day,
and had loved art and labored for it
in the pure JOY of creating. Money
to him was nothing. He did not know
how to earn it well. or to keep it. Art
was everything. He deemed it worth
the sacrifice of his son, whom he
forced to go to America in order to
extract a fortune from the new world.
But Pietro was beginning to learn
that fortunes are slow in coming, even
in young, thriving provinces, and his
art was more than the art of chiseled
marbles or of plaster casts. His love
was his ambition. He placed it above
his art, above his duty, above life it.
self. And the object had only growa
to mock him for his devotion.
Often as he sauntered along the city
streets, absorbed in thoughts of her,
he would stop with a startled look and
search the face of some passer-by that
reminded him wildly of his Beatricia.
He saw her often in this way, for her
image was really never absent from
his minds aye. In his reveries of
her she used to appear to him. and,
as in the days of old. she would wind
her soft. gentle arms around his neck