ments.

Those who have missed this experience in the early days of light purses;
who have not, in the dawn of their genius, stood in the presence of
a master and felt the throbbing of their hearts, will always carry in
their inmost souls a chord that has never been touched, and in their
work an indefinable quality will be lacking, a something in the stroke
of the brush, a mysterious element that we call poetry. The swaggerers,
so puffed up by self-conceit that they are confident over-soon of their
success, can never be taken for men of talent save by fools. From this
point of view, if youthful modesty is the measure of youthful genius,
the stranger on the staircase might be allowed to have something in
him; for he seemed to possess the indescribable diffidence, the early
timidity that artists are bound to lose in the course of a great career,
even as pretty women lose it as they make progress in the arts of
coquetry. Self-distrust vanishes as triumph succeeds to triumph, and
modesty is, perhaps, distrust of itself.

The poor neophyte was so overcome by the consciousness of his own
presumption and insignificance, that it began to look as if he was
hardly likely to penetrate into the studio of the painter, to whom we
owe the wonderful portrait of Henri IV. But fate was propitious; an old
man came up the staircase. From the quaint costume of this newcomer, his
collar of magnificent lace, and a certain serene gravity in his bearing,
the first arrival thought that this personage must be either a patron or
a friend of the court painter. He stood aside therefore upon the landing
to allow the visitor to pass, scrutinizing him curiously the while.
Perhaps he might hope to find the good nature of an artist or to receive
the good offices of an amateur not unfriendly to the arts; but besides
an almost diabolical expression in the face that met his gaze, there was
that indescribable something which has an irresistible attraction for
artists.

Picture that face. A bald high forehead and rugged jutting brows above
a small flat nose turned up at the end, as in the portraits of Socrates
and Rabelais; deep lines about the mocking mouth; a short chin, carried
proudly, covered with a grizzled pointed beard; sea-green eyes that age
might seem to have dimmed were it not for the contrast between the iris
and the surrounding mother-of-pearl tints, so that it seemed as if under
the stress of anger or enthusiasm there would be a magnetic power