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A modeller in clay, a statuary, via, an admirer of the choicer contrivings of Mother Nature! What and if he should find his cousin, his scarce-remembered gossip Mariota, worth an artist's half- closed eye! Had Papa seen the new dimple in Beppino's chin? And more soft piping to the same tune. Master Matteo was appeased; but Luca was far adrift with other matters.
But when Luca first knew Mariota and saw how her mother's pride beaconed from her smooth brow, the girl was standing in the Piazza in a tattered green kirtle and bodice that gaped at the hooks, played upon by sun, and fallow wind, and longing looks driven at her eyes in vain.
The town gaped, the husband admired; but Mariota, with her square chin and high carriage, looked as straightly before her, when in pale blue and silver-white, Madonna with the Babe and the holy deacons Stephen and Laurence stood, four months afterwards, within the shadow of the great church, and shone out to the day.
I pay silent respect to strapping Mariota and her baby-boy In the country of Boccace.
Well! he had his Madonna to hand, it would seem: Mariota at the door of the smith's house, confident, lissom and fresh, and the lusty child groping for his breakfast. The light had been upon her, gleamed upon her skin, her brimming eyes, her glossy brown hair. What a bravery was hers! What a glorified presentment of young life, new-budded, was here!
With never a blush, nor a quailing of the eyes' level beam, Mariota begs cousin Luca to become conscious of her master. There were the makings of a piece of right Boccacesque in all this, and the padrone showed manifest disinclination for his accustomed part: but Luca's candid face disclaimed all dark-entry work. Mariota hurried to her task.
I see her in Ghirlandajo's garden, pacing, still-eyed, calm and cold, with Ginevra de' Benci and Giovanna of the Albizzi, those quiet streets on a visit to the mother of John Baptist. Mariota, the hardy wife of the metal-smith, is not for one of your quality, though the wench is well enough now with her baby on her arm and the best of her seen by a poet and made enduring.
She had as squarely a modelled chin as ever I saw, and her lips firmly set and redder than strawberries in a wet May. None taught her anything; none, that Luca could learn, gave her sup or bed. He was a boy then and would have given her both. I think she knew he favoured her what girl does not? Everybody favoured Mariota, stayed as she passed, and followed her stealthily with troubled eyes.
As I recall your starry names, no blush hinting unmannerliness suspect and unconfessed hits me on the cheek: Simonetta, Ilaria, Nenciozza, Bettina; you too, candid Mariota of Prato; you, flinching little Imola; and you, snuff-taking, wool-carding ancient lady of the omnibus scorner of monks, I have kissed your hands, I have at least given our whole commerce frankly to the world; and I know not how any shall say we have been closer acquainted than we should.
Mariota she was then called for all her name, but as to her parentage none knew it, save that Marco's Vanna had been both frail and fair, and when she had been in flower the great Lord Ottoboni had flowered likewise and often in her company.
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