s not the
highest phase of art, it is the happiest. This fact proves that, in
the begetting of works of art, there is as much chance in the
character of the offspring as there is in a family of children; that
some will be happily graced, born beautiful, and costing their mothers
little suffering, creatures on whom everything smiles, and with whom
everything succeeds; in short, genius, like love, has its fairer
blossoms.

This _brio_, an Italian word which the French have begun to use, is
characteristic of youthful work. It is the fruit of an impetus and
fire of early talent--an impetus which is met with again later in some
happy hours; but this particular _brio_ no longer comes from the
artist's heart; instead of his flinging it into his work as a volcano
flings up its fires, it comes to him from outside, inspired by
circumstances, by love, or rivalry, often by hatred, and more often
still by the imperious need of glory to be lived up to.

This group by Wenceslas was to his later works what the _Marriage of
the Virgin_ is to the great mass of Raphael's, the first step of a
gifted artist taken with the inimitable grace, the eagerness, and
delightful overflowingness of a child, whose strength is concealed
under the pink-and-white flesh full of dimples which seem to echo to a
mother's laughter. Prince Eugene is said to have paid four hundred
thousand francs for this picture, which would be worth a million to
any nation that owned no picture by Raphael, but no one would give
that sum for the finest of the frescoes, though their value is far
greater as works of art.

Hortense restrained her admiration, for she reflected on the amount of
her girlish savings; she assumed an air of indifference, and said to
the dealer:

"What is the price of that?"

"Fifteen hundred francs," replied the man, sending a glance of
intelligence to a young man seated on a stool in the corner.

The young man himself gazed in a stupefaction at Monsieur Hulot's
living masterpiece. Hortense, forewarned, at once identified him as
the artist, from the color that flushed a face pale with endurance;
she saw the spark lighted up in his gray eyes by her question; she
looked on the thin, drawn features, like those of a monk consumed by
asceticism; she loved the red, well-formed mouth, the delicate chin,
and the Pole's silky chestnut hair.

"If it were twelve hundred," said she, "I would beg you to send it to
me."

"It is antique, mademoiselle," the