n
feel, it is also certain that admirable firmness of workmanship confronts
one, that the whole is very strong and very great. Pierre gradually
yielded to such sovereign masterliness, such virile elegance, such a
vision of supreme beauty set in supreme perfection. But if the "Dispute
on the Sacrament" and the so-called "School of Athens," both prior to the
paintings of the Sixtine Chapel, seemed to him to be Raffaelle's
masterpieces, he felt that in the "Burning of the Borgo," and
particularly in the "Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple," and "Pope
St. Leo staying Attila at the Gates of Rome," the artist had lost the
flower of his divine grace, through the deep impression which the
overwhelming grandeur of Michael Angelo had wrought upon him. How
crushing indeed had been the blow when the Sixtine Chapel was thrown open
and the rivals entered! The creations of the monster then appeared, and
the greatest of the humanisers lost some of his soul at sight of them,
thenceforward unable to rid himself of their influence.

From the _stanze_ Narcisse took Pierre to the _loggie_, those glazed
galleries which are so high and so delicately decorated. But here you
only find work which pupils executed after designs left by Raffaelle at
his death. The fall was sudden and complete, and never had Pierre better
understood that genius is everything--that when it disappears the school
collapses. The man of genius sums up his period; at a given hour he
throws forth all the sap of the social soil, which afterwards remains
exhausted often for centuries. So Pierre became more particularly
interested in the fine view that the _loggie_ afford, and all at once he
noticed that the papal apartments were in front of him, just across the
Court of San Damaso. This court, with its porticus, fountain, and white
pavement, had an aspect of empty, airy, sunlit solemnity which surprised
him. There was none of the gloom or pent-up religious mystery that he had
dreamt of with his mind full of the surroundings of the old northern
cathedrals. Right and left of the steps conducting to the rooms of the
Pope and the Cardinal Secretary of State four or five carriages were
ranged, the coachmen stiffly erect and the horses motionless in the
brilliant light; and nothing else peopled that vast square desert of a
court which, with its bareness gilded by the coruscations of its
glass-work and the ruddiness of its stones, suggested a pagan temple
dedicated to the sun.