proposed to make a sketch of him, and during the sitting was pleased
to find himself in agreement with the doctor upon many things.

"The main point," said the painter, "is to see simply--outlines,
general masses. The thing is not to copy nature with childish
minuteness."

"No, of course not," replied the doctor. "Besides, it can't be done."

"Of course it can't, because nature is so endlessly full of details
which can never all be considered. The thing is to suggest their
presence."

"Quite so," said the doctor.

But when he came to gaze upon the face he loved so well, and saw it
transformed into outlines and general masses, he seemed a little
surprised.

"Well, of course," he said, "it is excellent--oh, it's very, very
good--but don't you think you have made me a little too old? I have
no lines at the corner of my mouth, and my hair is not quite so
thin."

He appealed to the aide-de-camp who was just then passing by.

"Dundas, is this like me?"

"Certainly, Doc; but it's ten years younger."

The doctor's smile darkened, and he began rather insistently to
praise the Old Masters.

"Modern painting," he proclaimed, "is too brutal."

"Good heavens," said Aurelle, "a great artist cannot paint with a
powder-puff; you must be able to feel that the fellow with the pencil
was not a eunuch."

"Really," he went on, when the doctor had left in rather a bad
temper, "he's as ridiculous as the others. I think his portrait is
very vigorous, and not in the least a skit, whatever he may say."

"Just sit down there a minute, old man," said the painter. "I shall
be jolly glad to work from an intelligent model for once. They all
want to look like tailors' fashion-plates. Now, I can't change my
style; I don't paint in beauty paste, I render what I see--it's like
Diderot's old story about the amateur who asked a floral painter to
portray a lion. 'With pleasure,' said the artist, 'but you may expect
a lion that will be as like a rose as I can make him.'"

The conversation lasted a long time; it was friendly and technical.
Aurelle praised Beltara's painting; Beltara expressed his joy at
having found so penetrating and artistic a critic in the midst of
so many Philistines.

"I prefer your opinion to a painter's; it's certainly sincerer. Would
you mind turning your profile a bit more towards me? Some months
before the war I had two friends in my studio to whom I wished to
show a little picture I intended for the _Salon_.