t he was resolved to say no more.

Flandrin, delighted with Mueller's sketch, put it, with many thanks and
praises, carefully away in one of the great folios against the wall.

"You have no idea, _mon cher_ Mueller," he said, "of what value it is to
me. I was in despair about the thing till I saw that fellow this morning
in the Cafe; and he looked as if he had stepped out of the Middle Ages
on purpose for me. It is quite a mediaeval face--if you know what I mean
by a mediaeval face."

"I think I do," said Mueller. "You mean that there was a moyen-age type,
as there was a classical type, and as there is a modern type."

"Just so; and therein lies the main difficulty that we historical
painters have to encounter. When we cannot find portraits of our
characters, we are driven to invent faces for them--and who can invent
what he never sees? Invention must be based on some kind of experience;
and to study old portraits is not enough for our purpose, except we
frankly make use of them as portraits. We cannot generalize upon them,
so as to resuscitate a vanished type."

"But then has it really vanished?" said Mueller. "And how can we know for
certain that the mediaeval type did actually differ from the type we see
before us every day?"

"By simple and direct proof--by studying the epochs of portrait
painting. Take Holbein's heads, for instance. Were not the people of his
time grimmer, harder-visaged, altogether more unbeautiful than the
people of ours? Take Petitot's and Sir Peter Lely's. Can you doubt that
the characteristics of their period were entirely different? Do you
suppose that either race would look as we look, if resuscitated and
clothed in the fashion of to-day?"

"I am not at all sure that we should observe any difference," said
Mueller, doubtfully.

"And I feel sure we should observe the greatest," replied Flandrin,
striding up and down the studio, and speaking with great animation. "I
believe, as regards the men and women of Holbein's time, that their
faces were more lined than ours; their eyes, as a rule, smaller--their
mouths wider--their eyebrows more scanty--their ears larger--their
figures more ungainly. And in like manner, I believe the men and women
of the seventeenth century to have been more fleshy than either
Holbein's people or ourselves; to have had rounder cheeks, eyes more
prominent and heavy-lidded, shorter noses, more prominent chins, and
lips of a fuller and more voluptuous mould."

"