Then there was silence for a space, broken only by the quick, irregular striking of the two little hammers upon the heads of the chisels.
Maestro Marzio Pandolfi was a skilled workman and an artist.

He was one of the last of those workers in metals who once sent their masterpieces from Rome to the great cathedrals of the world; one of the last of the artistic descendants of Caradosso, of Benvenuto Cellini, of Claude Ballin, and of all their successors; one of those men of rare talent who unite the imagination of the artist with the executive skill of the practised workman.

They are hard to find nowadays.

Of all the twenty chisellers of various ages who hammered from morning till night in the rooms outside, one only--Gianbattista Bordogni--had been thought worthy by his master to share the privacy of the inner studio.

The lad had talent, said Maestro Marzio, and, what was more, the lad had ideas--ideas about life, about the future of Italy, about the future of the world's society.