e.

This sleight-of-hand seemed to the boy the most astounding evidence of
art. When would he reach the easy prestidigitation of his master!

With time the difference between Don Rafael and his pupil became more
marked. At school his comrades gathered around him, recognizing his
superiority and praising his drawings. Some professors, enemies of his
master, lamented that such talent should be lost beside that
"saint-painter." Don Rafael was surprised at what Mariano did outside of
his studio--figures and landscapes, directly observed which, according
to him, breathed the brutality of life.

His circle of serious gentlemen began to discover some merit in the
pupil.

"He will never reach your height, Don Rafael," they said. "He lacks
unction, he has no idealism, he will never paint a good Virgin--but as a
worldly painter he has a future."

The master, who loved the boy for his submissive nature and the purity
of his habits, tried in vain to make him follow the right way. If he
would only imitate him, his fortune was made. He would die without a
successor and his studio and his fame would be his. The boy only had to
see how, little by little, like a good ant of the Lord, the master had
gathered together a fair sized future with his brush. By virtue of his
idealism, he had his country house there in the village, and no end of
estates, the tenants of which came and visited him in his studio,
carrying on endless discussions over the payment and amount of the rents
in front of the poetic Virgins. The Church was poor because of the
impiety of the times, it could not pay as generously as in other
centuries, but commissions were numerous, and a Virgin in all her
purity was a matter of only three days--but young Renovales made a
troubled, wry face, as if a painful sacrifice were demanded of him.

"I can't, Master. I'm an idiot. I don't know how to invent things. I
paint only what I see."

And when he began to see naked bodies in the so-called "life" class he
devoted himself zealously to this study, as if the flesh caused in him
the most violent intoxication. Don Rafael was appalled by finding in the
corners of his house sketches that portrayed shameful nudes in all their
reality. Besides, the progress of his pupil caused him some uneasiness;
he saw in his painting a vigor that he himself had never had. He even
noted some falling-off in his circle of admirers. The good canons, as
always, admired his Virgins, but some of them