Lorenzo of Sarzana Author:Elizabeth Lewis General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1907 Original Publisher: Richard G. Badger Description: Green cloth stamped in gilt and blind. Top edges gilt. Fore and bottom edges rough cut. Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you... more » buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER ONE THEY were three unconventionally clad art students lounging on a certain marble balustrade in Genoa, and the figure a little below them as the street sloped down the hill was the Maestro with whom they painted. They were conscious of him though they avoided looking at him and he was totally unconscious of them and looked upon the sea. They had a grievance against him of which they never spoke but which formed a perfectly understood background for all their comments. It was that the Maestro was seeking a genius and they were one and all aware that they could not play the part. Yet no one of them deplored his own lack of qualifications for it half so much as he resented the Maestro's frank betrayal of his knowledge of it. It resulted in their having fits and starts of working like tigers that some day they might turn and rend him with their success. In this hope, they rent many innocent pieces of canvas but never punctured the Maestro's absorption in his quest with any sharp suspicion of his mistake. And all the while, the great difference between themwas merely a matter of religion. The three students could have turned their heads and seen from where they stood the old house on the quay whereon were perched quaint statues of the sacred hierarchy of Genoa -- Christ, Columbus, and Andrea Doria. Now, they were accustomed to repair weekly to the shrine of the first with an uneasy sense that they ought to keep the arrears of their sins brought up better le...« less