ls, whilst higher and still higher other angels,
bearing the instruments of the Passion, triumph as in full glory. And
yet, above this gigantic composition, painted thirty years subsequently,
in the full ripeness of age, the ceiling retains its ethereality, its
unquestionable superiority, for on it the artist bestowed all his virgin
power, his whole youth, the first great flare of his genius.

And Pierre found but one word to express his feelings: Michael Angelo was
the monster dominating and crushing all others. Beneath his immense
achievement you had only to glance at the works of Perugino,
Pinturicchio, Roselli, Signorelli, and Botticelli, those earlier
frescoes, admirable in their way, which below the cornice spread out
around the chapel.

Narcisse for his part had not raised his eyes to the overpowering
splendour of the ceiling. Wrapt in ecstasy, he did not allow his gaze to
stray from one of the three frescoes of Botticelli. "Ah! Botticelli," he
at last murmured; "in him you have the elegance and the grace of the
mysterious; a profound feeling of sadness even in the midst of
voluptuousness, a divination of the whole modern soul, with the most
troublous charm that ever attended artist's work."

Pierre glanced at him in amazement, and then ventured to inquire: "You
come here to see the Botticellis?"

"Yes, certainly," the young man quietly replied; "I only come here for
him, and five hours every week I only look at his work. There, just study
that fresco, Moses and the daughters of Jethro. Isn't it the most
penetrating work that human tenderness and melancholy have produced?"

Then, with a faint, devout quiver in his voice and the air of a priest
initiating another into the delightful but perturbing atmosphere of a
sanctuary, he went on repeating the praises of Botticelli's art; his
women with long, sensual, yet candid faces, supple bearing, and rounded
forms showing from under light drapery; his young men, his angels of
doubtful sex, blending stateliness of muscle with infinite delicacy of
outline; next the mouths he painted, fleshy, fruit-like mouths, at times
suggesting irony, at others pain, and often so enigmatical with their
sinuous curves that one knew not whether the words they left unuttered
were words of purity or filth; then, too, the eyes which he bestowed on
his figures, eyes of languor and passion, of carnal or mystical rapture,
their joy at times so instinct with grief as they peer into the nihili