and prevented any
immediate relish of a lighter vintage of delicate fragrance. Admiration
did not here fall upon one with lightning speed; it was slowly,
irresistibly that one grew charmed. And the contrast was like that of
Racine beside Corneille, Lamartine beside Hugo, the eternal pair, the
masculine and feminine genius coupled through centuries of glory. With
Raffaelle it is nobility, grace, exquisiteness, and correctness of line,
and divineness of harmony that triumph. You do not find in him merely the
materialist symbolism so superbly thrown off by Michael Angelo; he
introduces psychological analysis of deep penetration into the painter's
art. Man is shown more purified, idealised; one sees more of that which
is within him. And though one may be in presence of an artist of
sentimental bent, a feminine genius whose quiver of tenderness one can
feel, it is also certain that admirable firmness of workmanship confronts
one, that the whole is very strong and very great. Pierre gradually
yielded to such sovereign masterliness, such virile elegance, such a
vision of supreme beauty set in supreme perfection. But if the "Dispute
on the Sacrament" and the so-called "School of Athens," both prior to the
paintings of the Sixtine Chapel, seemed to him to be Raffaelle's
masterpieces, he felt that in the "Burning of the Borgo," and
particularly in the "Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple," and "Pope
St. Leo staying Attila at the Gates of Rome," the artist had lost the
flower of his divine grace, through the deep impression which the
overwhelming grandeur of Michael Angelo had wrought upon him. How
crushing indeed had been the blow when the Sixtine Chapel was thrown open
and the rivals entered! The creations of the monster then appeared, and
the greatest of the humanisers lost some of his soul at sight of them,
thenceforward unable to rid himself of their influence.

From the _stanze_ Narcisse took Pierre to the _loggie_, those glazed
galleries which are so high and so delicately decorated. But here you
only find work which pupils executed after designs left by Raffaelle at
his death. The fall was sudden and complete, and never had Pierre better
understood that genius is everything--that when it disappears the school
collapses. The man of genius sums up his period; at a given hour he
throws forth all the sap of the social soil, which afterwards remains
exhausted often for centuries. So Pierre became more particularly
intereste