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How he looks down on the poor wretch who, by the pinch of necessity, has come down from being a sculptor of the highest promise to being a mere gem-cutter! In the depths of your soul and I know it you regard my laborious art as half a handicraft.
Giovanni delle Corniole, the incomparable gem-cutter, who has left us the best portrait of Savonarola, voted with the two San Galli, "because he hears the stone is soft." Piero di Cosimo, the painter, and teacher of Andrea del Sarto, wound up the speeches with a strong recommendation that the choice of the exact spot should be left to Michelangelo Buonarroti.
The gem-cutter was not to be allowed to see his children till the leech should give leave, and the unfortunate man could not get over his surprise and emotion at finding in his new home not only a work-table, with tools, wax, and stones, but several cages full of birds, and among these feathered friends a starling.
The very same, noble Titianus, of whom I just now speaking to you." "You know him?" asked the prefect's wife. "No, but I have just left the work-shop of Periander, the gem-cutter, and there I saw the model of a statue of Antinous that is unique, marvellous, incomparable! The Bithynian as Dionysus! The work would do no discredit to a Phidias, to a Lysippus.
He then named the gem-cutter Heron, his son Alexander, and his daughter Melissa, the Alexandrian senator Polybius, his son Diodoros, and the wife of Seleukus. He described them as well as he was able. For each one Caesar promised a reward of three thousand drachmas, and for Heron's daughter twice as much, but only on condition of their being delivered up unhurt.
It was here that Heron kept his gold, not taking his children even into his confidence; and only a few months ago Argutis had been down with him and had found the old reservoir dry, airy, and quite habitable. The gem-cutter would be quite content to conceal himself where his treasure was, and the garden and work-room were only distant a few hundred paces from his own home.
You once said your native city was dear to you." "So it is," returned Melissa, who, at his last words had grown first red and then pale; "but Caesar can not surely be so narrow-minded as to punish a whole great city for what the poor daughter of a gem-cutter has done." "You are thinking of my Achilles," answered the philosopher.
Naturally, it is for him to command. See how much can be made of the child of a gem-cutter! But what says handsome Diodoros to all this? Why turn so pale? These, truly, are questions which I would fling in your face were things as they used to be. Now I say in all unconcern, do what you will!" The blood had ebbed from Melissa's cheeks during this attack of her brother's.
The gem-cutter clasped his bushy hair in both hands, for it seemed to him that the room was whirling round. But his old habits still got the better of him; he roared out with all the power of his mighty lungs: "What is that? What do you say? What has Alexander done? Where have you both of you-been?"
The gem-cutter looked like the shadow of himself, and had lost his upright carriage. He knew, indeed, that Melissa was alive, and that Alexander, after being wounded, had been carried by Andreas to the house of Zeno, and was on the way to recovery; but the death of his favorite son preyed on his mind, and it was a great grievance that his house should have been wrecked and burned.
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