eath the master
who should do it for him. His was the true artist nature, as unfit to
deal with rough human forces as a bird that flies through the air is
unfitted to a hand-to-hand grapple with the armed forces of the lower
world. There is strength in these artist natures. Curious computations
have been made of the immense muscular power that is brought into
exercise when a swallow skims so smoothly through the blue sky; but the
strength is of a kind unadapted to mundane uses, and needs the ether for
its display. Father Antonio could create the beautiful; he could warm,
could elevate, could comfort; and when a stronger nature went before
him, he could follow with an unquestioning tenderness of devotion: but
he wanted the sharp, downright power of mind that could cut and cleave
its way through the rubbish of the past, when its institutions, instead
of a commodious dwelling, had come to be a loathsome prison. Besides,
the true artist has ever an enchanted island of his own; and when this
world perplexes and wearies him, he can sail far away and lay his soul
down to rest, as Cytherea bore the sleeping Ascanius far from the din of
battle, to sleep on flowers and breathe the odor of a hundred undying
altars to Beauty.

Therefore, after a restless night, the good monk arose in the first
purple of the dawn, and instinctively betook him to a review of his
drawings for the shrine, as a refuge from troubled thought. He took his
sketch of the Madonna and Child into the morning twilight and began
meditating thereon, while the clouds that lined the horizon were glowing
rosy purple and violet with the approaching day.

"See there!" he said to himself, "yonder clouds have exactly the rosy
purple of the cyclamen which my little Agnes loves so much;--yes, I am
resolved that this cloud on which our Mother standeth shall be of a
cyclamen color. And there is that star, like as it looked yesterday
evening, when I mused upon it. Methought I could see our Lady's clear
brow, and the radiance of her face, and I prayed that some little power
might be given to show forth that which transports me."

And as the monk plied his pencil, touching here and there, and
elaborating the outlines of his drawing, he sang,--

"Ave, Maris Stella,
Dei mater alma,
Atque semper virgo,
Felix coeli porta!

"Virgo singularis,
Inter omnes mitis,
Nos culpis solutos
Mites fac et castos!

"Vitam praesta puram,
Iter para tutum,
Ut viden