Then he looked away. He would say no more.
'And how did you become a sculptor?' asked Ursula.
'How did I become a sculptor--' he paused. 'Dunque--' he resumed, in a
changed manner, and beginning to speak French--'I became old enough--I
used to steal from the market-place. Later I went to work--imprinted
the stamp on clay bottles, before they were baked. It was an
earthenware-bottle factory. There I began making models. One day, I had
had enough. I lay in the sun and did not go to work. Then I walked to
Munich--then I walked to Italy--begging, begging everything.'
'The Italians were very good to me--they were good and honourable to
me. From Bozen to Rome, almost every night I had a meal and a bed,
perhaps of straw, with some peasant. I love the Italian people, with
all my heart.
'Dunque, adesso--maintenant--I earn a thousand pounds in a year, or I
earn two thousand--'
He looked down at the ground, his voice tailing off into silence.
Gudrun looked at his fine, thin, shiny skin, reddish-brown from the
sun, drawn tight over his full temples; and at his thin hair--and at
the thick, coarse, brush-like moustache, cut short about his mobile,
rather shapeless mouth.
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