such thing as drawing, and that by means of lines we can
only reproduce geometrical figures; but that is overshooting the mark,
for by outline and shadow you can reproduce form without any color at
all, which shows that our art, like Nature, is composed of an infinite
number of elements. Drawing gives you the skeleton, the anatomical
frame-' work, and color puts the life into it; but life without the
skeleton is even more incomplete than a skeleton without life. But there
is something else truer still, and it is this--f or painters, practise
and observation are everything; and when theories and poetical ideas
begin to quarrel with the brushes, the end is doubt, as has happened
with our good friend, who is half crack-brained enthusiast, half
painter. A sublime painter! but unlucky for him, he was born to riches,
and so he has leisure to follow his fancies. Do not you follow his
example! Work! painters have no business to think, except brush in
hand."

"We will find a way into his studio!" cried Poussin confidently. He had
ceased to heed Porbus's remarks. The other smiled at the young painter's
enthusiasm, asked him to come to see him again, and they parted. Nicolas
Poussin went slowly back to the Rue de la Harpe, and passed the
modest hostelry where he was lodging without noticing it. A feeling of
uneasiness prompted him to hurry up the crazy staircase till he reached
a room at the top, a quaint, airy recess under the steep, high-pitched
roof common among houses in old Paris. In the one dingy window of the
place sat a young girl, who sprang up at once when she heard some one at
the door; it was the prompting of love; she had recognized the painter's
touch on the latch.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked.

"The matter is... is... Oh! I have felt that I am a painter! Until
to-day I have had doubts, but now I believe in myself! There is the
making of a great man in me! Never mind, Gillette, we shall be rich and
happy! There is gold at the tips of those brushes--"

He broke off suddenly. The joy faded from his powerful and earnest face
as he compared his vast hopes with his slender resources. The walls were
covered with sketches in chalk on sheets of common paper. There were
but four canvases in the room. Colors were very costly, and the young
painter's palette was almost bare. Yet in the midst of his poverty he
possessed and was conscious of the possession of inexhaustible treasures
of the heart, of a devouring