ps, in
that countenance, at once sweet and hungering, in the movement of the
arms closely folded over her bosom, raised to her face, and themselves
forming a cross, he had seen the complete absorption of a bride, the
rapt, ecstatic joy of the purest love, and at the same time something of
the anxious affection of a mother cherishing the Christ she kissed, and
seemed to shelter in her bosom like a suffering child.

And this was all set forth without any theatrical attitude or forced
gestures, with perfect simplicity. This Saint Clare has no ravings, no
outcries, like Saint Magdalen of Pazzi; she does not soar with the
flight of divine intoxication. The mystic possession manifests itself in
a mute rapture; her transports are controlled, and her inebriety is
grave; she does not diffuse herself, but opens her soul, and Jesus, as
He enters in, stamps her with His likeness, impresses her with the image
of the Crucifix she holds, and of which the impress was found graven on
her heart when it was examined after her death.

This was the most remarkable religious painting of our time, and it was
achieved with no borrowing from the Early painters, no trickery of
awkward attitudes supported by iron bars, no affectations, no artifice.
And what a devout Catholic, what an emotionally pious artist must the
man be who could produce such a work!

After him the rest was silence. Among the religious youth of to-day no
one is to be found equal to the presentment of Church subjects. "Only
one," said Durtal, thinking it over, "gave any hope of such powers, for
he stands apart from the rest, and, at any rate, has talent."

He rose and went to turn over his portfolios, picking out the
lithographs by Charles Dulac.

This artist had begun with a series of landscapes, idealizing nature, at
first with a timid hand--extravagantly large pools, and trees with
leaves that looked like wild wigs tossed by the wind; then he had
produced a rendering in black and white of a Canticle of the Sun, or of
Creation, and had poured out in nine plates, printed in different states
of tone, that effluence of mystical feeling which in his first set was
still latent and undecided.

The rather hackneyed dictum that "a landscape is a state of mind," was
strictly appropriate to this work; the artist had stamped his faith on
these views, studied, no doubt, from nature, but seen, it was evident,
not by the eyes alone, but by a captivated spirit singing in the open
ai