n the left hand shutter and St. Gereon on the right.

Durtal's consternation had risen to the highest pitch. The work was thus
arranged. Against a gold background, a Virgin, crowned, red-haired,
bullet-headed, dressed in blue, held on her knees an Infant blessing the
Kings, two kneeling on each side of the throne. One, an old fellow with
a short beard like a retired officer, and hair curled like shavings over
his ears, was sumptuously arrayed in crimson velvet brocaded with gold,
his hands clasped; the other, a dandy with long hair and a large beard,
dressed in green shot with gold and trimmed with fur, held up a golden
cup. And behind each, other figures were standing, flourishing their
swords and standards, in cavalier attitudes, and posing for the public,
thinking much more of the visitors than of the Virgin.

This, then, was the type of Madonna, of the supersensual and sublimated
Virgins of Cologne! This one was puffy, redundant, chubby; she had the
neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream, or hasty pudding, that quivers
when it is touched. Jesus, whose expression was the only interesting
feature of the picture, a certain manly gravity that was shown without
any disfigurement of the character of childhood, was also round and
well-fed, and the scene took place on a lawn strewn with
flowers--primroses, violets, and strawberries painted in fine stipple
with the touch of a miniaturist.

You might call this picture what you pleased, the execution, smooth and
wavy, and cold in spite of the brilliant colours, was a finished piece
of work, brilliant, dexterous--but not religious; it betrayed a
decadence; the work was laboured, complicated, pretty, but it was in no
sense that of an early master.

This common, squat Virgin, fat and pudgy, was simply a good German girl,
well-dressed and squarely seated, but she could never have been the
ecstatic Mother of God! Then these kneeling and standing men were not in
prayer; there was no devotion in this picture; the personages were all
thinking of something else, folding their hands and looking round at the
painter who was depicting them. As to the wings, it were better to say
nothing about them. What was to be thought of the Saint Ursula with a
prominent forehead like a cupping-glass and a burly stomach, surrounded
by other creatures as shapeless as herself, their squab noses poking out
of the bladders of lard that did duty for their faces?

And Durtal found the same impression of