which lends such charm to pictures
of the Dutch school. The white linen, the silver, the cut glass, were
brilliant accessories, and made more picturesque by strong contrasts of
light and shade. The figures of the head of the family and his wife, the
faces of the apprentices, and the pure form of Augustine, near whom a
fat chubby-cheeked maid was standing, composed so strange a group; the
heads were so singular, and every face had so candid an expression; it
was so easy to read the peace, the silence, the modest way of life in
this family, that to an artist accustomed to render nature, there was
something hopeless in any attempt to depict this scene, come upon by
chance. The stranger was a young painter, who, seven years before, had
gained the first prize for painting. He had now just come back from
Rome. His soul, full-fed with poetry; his eyes, satiated with Raphael
and Michael Angelo, thirsted for real nature after long dwelling in the
pompous land where art has everywhere left something grandiose. Right or
wrong, this was his personal feeling. His heart, which had long been
a prey to the fire of Italian passion, craved one of those modest
and meditative maidens whom in Rome he had unfortunately seen only
in painting. From the enthusiasm produced in his excited fancy by the
living picture before him, he naturally passed to a profound admiration
for the principal figure; Augustine seemed to be pensive, and did not
eat; by the arrangement of the lamp the light fell full on her face, and
her bust seemed to move in a circle of fire, which threw up the shape of
her head and illuminated it with almost supernatural effect. The artist
involuntarily compared her to an exiled angel dreaming of heaven. An
almost unknown emotion, a limpid, seething love flooded his heart. After
remaining a minute, overwhelmed by the weight of his ideas, he tore
himself from his bliss, went home, ate nothing, and could not sleep.

The next day he went to his studio, and did not come out of it till he
had placed on canvas the magic of the scene of which the memory had, in
a sense, made him a devotee; his happiness was incomplete till he should
possess a faithful portrait of his idol. He went many times past the
house of the Cat and Racket; he even ventured in once or twice, under
a disguise, to get a closer view of the bewitching creature that Madame
Guillaume covered with her wing. For eight whole months, devoted to his
love and to his brush, he wa