fling out of the
window, together with the fellow who ground them, their crudeness and
falseness are disgusting! How can one paint with this?"

He dipped the tip of the brush with feverish eagerness in the different
pigments, making the circuit of the palette several times more quickly
than the organist of a cathedral sweeps the octaves on the keyboard of
his clavier for the "O Filii" at Easter.

Porbus and Poussin, on either side of the easel, stood stock-still,
watching with intense interest.

"Look, young man," he began again, "see how three or four strokes of
the brush and a thin glaze of blue let in the free air to play about the
head of the poor Saint, who must have felt stifled and oppressed by the
close atmosphere! See how the drapery begins to flutter; you feel that
it is lifted by the breeze! A moment ago it hung as heavily and stiffly
as if it were held out by pins. Do you see how the satin sheen that I
have just given to the breast rends the pliant, silken softness of a
young girl's skin, and how the brown-red, blended with burnt ochre,
brings warmth into the cold gray of the deep shadow where the blood lay
congealed instead of coursing through the veins? Young man, young man,
no master could teach you how to do this that I am doing before your
eyes. Mabuse alone possessed the secret of giving life to his figures;
Mabuse had but one pupil--that was I. I have had none, and I am old. You
have sufficient intelligence to imagine the rest from the glimpses that
I am giving you."

While the old man was speaking, he gave a touch here and there;
sometimes two strokes of the brush, sometimes a single one; but every
stroke told so well, that the whole picture seemed transfigured--the
painting was flooded with light. He worked with such passionate fervor
that beads of sweat gathered upon his bare forehead; he worked so
quickly, in brief, impatient jerks, that it seemed to young Poussin as
if some familiar spirit inhabiting the body of this strange being took
a grotesque pleasure in making use of the man's hands against his own
will. The unearthly glitter of his eyes, the convulsive movements
that seemed like struggles, gave to this fancy a semblance of truth
which could not but stir a young imagination. The old man continued,
saying as he did so--

"Paf! paf! that is how to lay it on, young man!--Little touches! come
and bring a glow into those icy cold tones for me! Just so! Pon! pon!
pon!" and those parts of t