s, afterwards painted them, knife in
hand, attacking the Mamelukes with the agility of monkeys, felling those
Egyptian centaurs under their slashes, blackened with the smoke of a
hundred battles, or dying with theatrical pride by the light of a
lantern in the gloomy solitude of Moncloa, shot by the invaders.

Renovales admired the tragic atmosphere of the canvas before him. The
executioners hid their faces, leaning on their guns; they were the blind
executors of fate, a nameless force, and before them rose the pile of
palpitating, bloody flesh; the dead with strips of flesh torn off by the
bullets, showing reddish holes, the living with folded arms, defying the
murderers in a tongue they could not understand, or covering their faces
with their hands, as though this instinctive movement could save them
from the lead. A whole people died, to be born again. And beside this
picture of horror and heroism, in another close to it, he saw Palafox,
the Leonidas of Saragossa, mounted on horseback, with his stylish
whiskers and the arrogance of a blacksmith in a captain-general's
uniform, having in his bearing something of the appearance of a popular
chieftain, holding in one hand, gloved in buckskin, the curved saber,
and in the other the reins of his stocky, big-bellied steed.

Renovales thought that art is like light, which acquires color and
brightness from the objects it touches. Goya had passed through a stormy
period; he had been a spectator of the resurrection of the soul of the
people and his painting contained the tumultuous life, the heroic fury
that you look for in vain in the canvases of that other genius, tied as
he was to the monotonous existence of the palace, unbroken except by the
news of distant wars in which they had little interest and whose
victories, too late to be useful, had the coldness of doubt.

The painter turned away from the dames of Goya, clad in white cambric,
with their rosebud mouths and with their hair done up like a turban, to
concentrate his attention on a nude figure, the luminous gleam of whose
flesh seemed to throw the adjacent canvases in a shadow. He
contemplated it closely for a long time, bending over the railing till
the brim of his hat almost touched the canvas. Then he gradually moved
away, without ceasing to look at it, until, at last, he sat down on a
bench, still facing the picture with his eyes fixed upon it.

"Goya's _Maja_. The _Maja Desnuda!_"

He spoke aloud, without real