etches in charcoal, red chalk, or
pen and ink. Amid the litter and confusion of color boxes, overturned
stools, flasks of oil, and essences, there was just room to move so as
to reach the illuminated circular space where the easel stood. The light
from the window in the roof fell full upon Por-bus's pale face and on
the ivory-tinted forehead of his strange visitor. But in another moment
the younger man heeded nothing but a picture that had already become
famous even in those stormy days of political and religious revolution,
a picture that a few of the zealous worshipers, who have so often kept
the sacred fire of art alive in evil days, were wont to go on pilgrimage
to see. The beautiful panel represented a Saint Mary of Egypt about to
pay her passage across the seas. It was a masterpiece destined for Mary
de' Medici, who sold it in later years of poverty.

"I like your saint," the old man remarked, addressing Porbus. "I would
give you ten golden crowns for her over and above the price the Queen is
paying; but as for putting a spoke in that wheel,--the devil take it!"

"It is good then?"

"Hey! hey!" said the old man; "good, say you?--Yes and no. Your good
woman is not badly done, but she is not alive. You artists fancy that
when a figure is correctly drawn, and everything in its place according
to the rules of anatomy, there is nothing more to be done. You make up
the flesh tints beforehand on your palettes according to your formulae,
and fill in the outlines with due care that one side of the face shall
be darker than the other; and because you look from time to time at a
naked woman who stands on the platform before you, you fondly imagine
that you have copied nature, think yourselves to be painters, believe
that you have wrested His secret from God. Pshaw! You may know your
syntax thoroughly and make no blunders in your grammar, but it takes
that and something more to make a great poet. Look at your saint,
Porbus! At a first glance she is admirable; look at her again, and you
see at once that she is glued to the background, and that you could not
walk round her. She is a silhouette that turns but one side of her face
to all beholders, a figure cut out of canvas, an image with no power
to move nor change her position. I feel as if there were no air between
that arm and the background, no space, no sense of distance in your
canvas. The perspective is perfectly correct, the strength of the
coloring is accurately dimi