ornaments of bronze, for the _fleurons_
and roses of gold, for the whole of the wondrously rich decorative work
which surrounded the frescoes. And Pierre imagined Michael Angelo on the
day when the bare vault was handed over to him, covered with plaster,
offering only a flat white surface, hundreds of square yards to be
adorned. And he pictured him face to face with that huge white page,
refusing all help, driving all inquisitive folks away, jealously,
violently shutting himself up alone with his gigantic task, spending four
and a half years in fierce solitude, and day by day adding to his
colossal work of creation. Ah! that mighty work, a task to fill a whole
lifetime, a task which he must have begun with quiet confidence in his
own will and power, drawing, as it were, an entire world from his brain
and flinging it there with the ceaseless flow of creative virility in the
full heyday of its omnipotence.

And Pierre was yet more overcome when he began to examine these
presentments of humanity, magnified as by the eyes of a visionary,
overflowing in mighty sympathetic pages of cyclopean symbolisation. Royal
grace and nobility, sovereign peacefulness and power--every beauty shone
out like natural florescence. And there was perfect science, the most
audacious foreshortening risked with the certainty of success--an
everlasting triumph of technique over the difficulty which an arched
surface presented. And, in particular, there was wonderful simplicity of
medium; matter was reduced almost to nothingness; a few colours were used
broadly without any studied search for effect or brilliancy. Yet that
sufficed, the blood seethed freely, the muscles projected, the figures
became animated and stood out of their frames with such energy and dash
that it seemed as if a flame were flashing by aloft, endowing all those
beings with superhuman and immortal life. Life, aye, it was life, which
burst forth and triumphed--mighty, swarming life, miraculous life, the
creation of one sole hand possessed of the supreme gift--simplicity
blended with power.

That a philosophical system, a record of the whole of human destiny,
should have been found therein, with the creation of the world, of man,
and of woman, the fall, the chastisement, then the redemption, and
finally God's judgment on the last day--this was a matter on which Pierre
was unable to dwell, at this first visit, in the wondering stupor into
which the paintings threw him. But he could