nd there upon the wall. They stopped first of all in
admiration before the life-size figure of a woman partially draped.

"Oh! never mind that," said Frenhofer; "that is a rough daub that I
made, a study, a pose, it is nothing. These are my failures," he went
on, indicating the enchanting compositions upon the walls of the studio.

This scorn for such works of art struck Porbus and Poussin dumb with
amazement. They looked round for the picture of which he had spoken, and
could not discover it.

"Look here!" said the old man. His hair was disordered, his face aglow
with a more than human exaltation, his eyes glittered, he breathed hard
like a young lover frenzied by love.

"Aha!" he cried, "you did not expect to see such perfection! You are
looking for a picture, and you see a woman before you. There is such
depth in that canvas, the atmosphere is so true that you can not
distinguish it from the air that surrounds us. Where is art? Art has
vanished, it is invisible! It is the form of a living girl that you see
before you. Have I not caught the very hues of life, the spirit of the
living line that defines the figure? Is there not the effect produced
there like that which all natural objects present in the atmosphere
about them, or fishes in the water? Do you see how the figure stands out
against the background? Does it not seem to you that you pass your hand
along the back? But then for seven years I studied and watched how the
daylight blends with the objects on which it falls. And the hair, the
light pours over it like a flood, does it not?... Ah! she breathed, I am
sure that she breathed! Her breast--ah, see! Who would not fall on his
knees before her? Her pulses throb. She will rise to her feet. Wait!"

"Do you see anything?" Poussin asked of Porbus.

"No... do you?"

"I see nothing."

The two painters left the old man to his ecstasy, and tried to ascertain
whether the light that fell full upon the canvas had in some way
neutralized all the effect for them. They moved to the right and left
of the picture; they came in front, bending down and standing upright by
turns.

"Yes, yes, it is really canvas," said Frenhofer, who mistook the nature
of this minute investigation.

"Look! the canvas is on a stretcher, here is the easel; indeed, here are
my colors, my brushes," and he took up a brush and held it out to them,
all unsuspicious of their thought.

"The old _lansquenet_ is laughing at us," said Poussin, co