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The potential quarries of which Sir Samuel had spoken were children of his own imagination, and the only good they did us was to illustrate how easily practical men may deceive themselves even when, like Sir Samuel, they are usually keen observers. We did indeed bring a few specimens back with us, but to the marble quarry as a practical project I had already said "Good-by."
So common at that day were these barbarous appropriations of the most precious monuments of art, that the columns and domes of earlier Rome were regarded by all classes but as quarries, from which every man was free to gather the materials, whether for his castle or his cottage, a wantonness of outrage far greater than the Goths', to whom a later age would fain have attributed all the disgrace, and which, more perhaps than even heavier offences, excited the classical indignation of Petrarch, and made him sympathise with Rienzi in his hopes of Rome.
Reporting on 11th March he says that 'Last Thursday and yesterday' the day of the sensational report above given 'several useful hands were picked up, mostly seamen, who were concealed in the different lodgings and were discovered by their girls. He adds, 'Several prime seamen were yesterday taken disguised as labourers in the different marble quarries round the town. On 14th October the report is that 'the different press-gangs, with their officers, literally scoured the country on the eastern roads and picked up several fine young fellows. Here, again, no distinction is drawn between men really impressed and men who were arrested for being absent beyond the duration of their leave.
In the grey sky above, a waning moon gave them just sufficient light to see their immediate surroundings a grass-covered track, no longer used, and the yawning mouths of the old quarries, no longer worked, the edges of which were thick with gorse and bramble. It was the very place for secret work, and Pratt was certain that secret work was at hand.
"Our camping-out things are in that place," said Snap. "Is that so. What blew up, some of your powder?" "I I don't think so," faltered Snap. He had up to that moment not thought of the cartridges they had stored on one of the sleds. "Must have been pretty powerful," said another man. "That noise was like a regular blast over to the stone quarries."
With his father he continued till he was old enough to gain his own maintenance, when he went to serve a farmer in the neighbourhood. Having saved some money young Morgan departed to the foundries at Cefn Mawr, at which he worked thirty years with an interval of four, which he had passed partly in working in slate quarries, and partly upon the canal.
Accordingly, on his return to Rome in 1508, this new task was allotted him. In vain did Michael Angelo remind his master of the months wasted in the quarries of Carrara; in vain he pointed to his designs for the monument, and pleaded that he was not a painter by profession. Julius had made up his mind that he should paint the Sistine.
Three years ago, on the occasion of the marriage of their eldest son, they had been standing together, looking up at the starry sky, when Petrus had come close up to her, and had said, "How calmly and peacefully the wanderers up there follow their roads without jostling or touching one another! As I walked home alone from the quarries by their friendly light, I thought of many things.
Since there were no quarries of coloured marble they had to quarry in their minds, and there they found the Gothic style, which made every church like the holiest moment of a holy soul's aspiration to God, and which is doubtless more pleasing to Him, if He exists to be pleased, than precious stones. So was it with love.
'You wait till we get our eyes on one, that's all, said Williams, and you won't wait much longer. But the wait lasted longer than Ken and Roy expected. All that day G2 cruised slowly back and forth between the big island of Marmora, where the marble quarries are, and the high coast of the European mainland, yet nothing rewarded her vigilant watch.
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