, "and again here," he went on, indicating the
rounded shoulder. "But there," once more returning to the column of
the throat, "everything is false. Let us go no further into detail, you
would be disheartened."

The old man sat down on a stool, and remained a while without speaking,
with his face buried in his hands.

"Yet I studied that throat from the life, dear master," Porbus began;
"it happens sometimes, for our misfortune, that real effects in nature
look improbable when transferred to canvas--"

"The aim of art is not to copy nature, but to express it. You are not a
servile copyist, but a poet!" cried the old man sharply, cutting Porbus
short with an imperious gesture. "Otherwise a sculptor might make a
plaster cast of a living woman and save himself all further trouble.
Well, try to make a cast of your mistress's hand, and set up the
thing before you. You will see a monstrosity, a dead mass, bearing no
resemblance to the living hand; you would be compelled to have recourse
to the chisel of a sculptor who, without making an exact copy, would
represent for you its movement and its life. We must detect the spirit,
the informing soul in the appearances of things and beings. Effects!
What are effects but the accidents of life, not life itself? A hand,
since I have taken that example, is not only a part of a body, it is the
expression and extension of a thought that must be grasped and rendered.
Neither painter nor poet nor sculptor may separate the effect from the
cause, which are inevitably contained the one in the other. There
begins the real struggle! Many a painter achieves success instinctively,
unconscious of the task that is set before art. You draw a woman, yet
you do not see her! Not so do you succeed in wresting Nature's secrets
from her! You are reproducing mechanically the model that you copied in
your master's studio. You do not penetrate far enough into the inmost
secrets of the mystery of form; you do not seek with love enough and
perseverance enough after the form that baffles and eludes you. Beauty
is a thing severe and unapproachable, never to be won by a languid
lover. You must lie in wait for her coming and take her unawares, press
her hard and clasp her in a tight embrace, and force her to yield. Form
is a Proteus more intangible and more manifold than the Proteus of the
legend; compelled, only after long wrestling, to stand forth manifest in
his true aspect. Some of you are satisfied with the