of anything he looked at. And
when, in his enthusiasm, he carried the book over and began to tell
Brother Stephen why he so much admired the painting, without knowing it,
he really made the latter feel happier than he had felt for many a day.
He began to have a decided notion that he would paint King Louis's book
after all. And just then, as if to settle the matter, he happened to
glance at the corner of the table where Gabriel had laid down his bunch
of flowers as he came in.

It chanced that some of the violets had fallen from the cluster and
dropped upon a broad ruler of brass that lay beside the painting
materials. And even as Brother Stephen looked, it chanced also that a
little white butterfly drifted into the room through the bars of the
high, open window; after vaguely fluttering about for a while, at last,
attracted by the blossoms, it came, and, poising lightly over the
violets on the ruler, began to sip the honey from the heart of one of
them.

As Brother Stephen's artistic eye took in the beauty of effect made by
the few flowers on the brass ruler with the butterfly hovering over
them, he, too, gave a little exclamation, and his eyes brightened and he
smiled; for he had just got a new idea for an illuminated border.

"Yes," he said to himself, "this would be different from any I have yet
seen! I will decorate King Louis's book with borders of gold; and on the
gold I will paint the meadow wildflowers, and the bees and butterflies,
and all the little flying creatures."

Now before this, all the borders of the Abbey books had been painted, in
the usual manner of the time, with scrolls and birds and flowers more or
less conventionalized; that is, the artists did not try to make them
look exactly like the real ones, but twisted them about in all sorts of
fantastic ways. Sometimes the stem of a flower would end in the
curled-up folds of a winged dragon, or a bird would have strange
blossoms growing out of his beak, or perhaps the tips of his wings.

These borders were indeed exquisitely beautiful, but Brother Stephen
was just tired of it all, and wanted to do something quite different; so
he was delighted with his new idea of painting the field-flowers exactly
like nature, only placing them on a background of gold.

As he pictured in his mind one page after another thus adorned, he
became more and more interested and impatient to begin at once. He
forgot all about his anger at the Abbot; he forgot everything