pens the narrow singing gallery with its balcony of marble. And for
everything suddenly to spread out and soar into the infinite one must
raise one's head, allow one's eyes to ascend from the huge fresco of the
Last Judgment, occupying the whole of the end wall, to the paintings
which cover the vaulted ceiling down to the cornice extending between the
twelve windows of white glass, six on either hand.

Fortunately there were only three or four quiet tourists there; and
Pierre at once perceived Narcisse Habert occupying one of the cardinals'
seats above the steps where the train-bearers crouch. Motionless, and
with his head somewhat thrown back, the young man seemed to be in
ecstasy. But it was not the work of Michael Angelo that he thus
contemplated. His eyes never strayed from one of the earlier frescoes
below the cornice; and on recognising the priest he contented himself
with murmuring: "Ah! my friend, just look at the Botticelli." Then, with
dreamy eyes, he relapsed into a state of rapture.

Pierre, for his part, had received a great shock both in heart and in
mind, overpowered as he was by the superhuman genius of Michael Angelo.
The rest vanished; there only remained, up yonder, as in a limitless
heaven, the extraordinary creations of the master's art. That which at
first surprised one was that the painter should have been the sole
artisan of the mighty work. No marble cutters, no bronze workers, no
gilders, no one of another calling had intervened. The painter with his
brush had sufficed for all--for the pilasters, columns, and cornices of
marble, for the statues and the ornaments of bronze, for the _fleurons_
and roses of gold, for the whole of the wondrously rich decorative work
which surrounded the frescoes. And Pierre imagined Michael Angelo on the
day when the bare vault was handed over to him, covered with plaster,
offering only a flat white surface, hundreds of square yards to be
adorned. And he pictured him face to face with that huge white page,
refusing all help, driving all inquisitive folks away, jealously,
violently shutting himself up alone with his gigantic task, spending four
and a half years in fierce solitude, and day by day adding to his
colossal work of creation. Ah! that mighty work, a task to fill a whole
lifetime, a task which he must have begun with quiet confidence in his
own will and power, drawing, as it were, an entire world from his brain
and flinging it there with the ceaseless flow