he air plays round it. And yet--I am not
satisfied; I have misgivings. Perhaps one ought not to draw a single
line; perhaps it would be better to attack the face from the centre,
taking the highest prominences first, proceeding from them through the
whole range of shadows to the heaviest of all. Is not this the method
of the sun, the divine painter of the world? Oh, Nature, Nature! who
has surprised thee, fugitive? But, after all, too much knowledge, like
ignorance, brings you to a negation. I have doubts about my work."

There was a pause. Then the old man spoke again. "I have been at work
upon it for ten years, young man; but what are ten short years in a
struggle with Nature? Do we know how long Sir Pygmalion wrought at the
one statue that came to life?" The old man fell into deep musings, and
gazed before him with unseeing eyes, while he played unheedingly with
his knife.

"Look, he is in conversation with his _domon!_" murmured Porbus.

At the word, Nicolas Poussin felt himself carried away by an
unaccountable accession of artist's curiosity. For him the old man, at
once intent and inert, the seer with the unseeing eyes, became something
more than a man--a fantastic spirit living in a mysterious world, and
countless vague thoughts awoke within his soul. The effect of this
species of fascination upon his mind can no more be described in words
than the passionate longing awakened in an exile's heart by the song
that recalls his home. He thought of the scorn that the old man affected
to display for the noblest efforts of art, of his wealth, his manners,
of the deference paid to him by Porbus. The mysterious picture, the work
of patience on which he had wrought so long in secret, was doubtless
a work of genius, for the head of the Virgin which young Poussin had
admired so frankly was beautiful even beside Mabuse's "Adam"--there
was no mistaking the imperial manner of one of the princes of art.
Everything combined to set the old man beyond the limits of human
nature.

Out of the wealth of fancies in Nicolas Poussin's brain an idea grew,
and gathered shape and clearness. He saw in this supernatural being a
complete type of the artist nature, a nature mocking and kindly, barren
and prolific, an erratic spirit intrusted with great and manifold powers
which she too often abuses, leading sober reason, the Philistine, and
sometimes even the amateur forth into a stony wilderness where they see
nothing; but the white-winged