ue and
religion, rousing in their breasts feelings of envy and malice and all
uncharitableness. A great misfortune which afflicted him shortly after,
the loss, by a contagious disorder, of his wife, daughter, and infant
son, he accounted a judgment of heaven upon his sin. He determined to
quit the world, and devote himself to religion and prayer. I was then
nine years of age. He placed me in the Academy of Arts, wound up his
affairs, and retired to a remote convent, where he shortly afterwards
assumed the tonsure. There, by the severity of his life, and by the
unwearied punctuality with which he fulfilled the rules of his order, he
struck the whole brotherhood with surprise and admiration. The superior
of the monastery, hearing of his skill as a painter, requested him to
execute an altar-piece for the convent chapel. But the devout brother
declared that his pencil had been polluted by a great sin, and that he
must purify himself by mortification and long penance, before he could
dare apply it to a holy purpose. He then, of his own accord, gradually
increased the austerity of his monastic life. At last, the utmost
privations he could inflict on himself appearing to him insufficient, he
retired, with the blessing of the superior, to court solitude in the
desert. There he built himself a hermitage out of the branches of trees,
lived on uncooked roots, dragged a heavy stone with him wherever he
went, and stood from sunrise to sunset with his hands uplifted to
heaven, fervently praying. His penances and mortifications were such as
we find examples of only in the lives of the saints. For many years he
followed this austere manner of life, and his brethren at the convent
had given up all hopes of again seeing him, when one day he suddenly
appeared amongst them. 'I am ready,' he said, firmly and calmly to the
superior: 'with the help of God, I will begin my task.' The subject he
selected was the Birth of Christ. For a whole year he laboured
incessantly at his picture, without leaving his cell, nourishing himself
with the coarsest food, and rigid in the fulfilment of his religious
duties. At the end of that time the picture was completed. It was a
miracle of art. Neither the brethren nor the superior were profound
critics of painting, but they were awe-struck by the extraordinary
sublimity of the figures. The sentiment of divine tranquillity and
mildness in the Holy Mother, bending over the Infant Jesus--the profound
and celestia