of his
young companions, and seized the first pretext for dismissing them.

Shortly afterwards, the Jesuits of Paris celebrated the canonisation
of St Ignatius and St Francis Xavier. For this occasion, Poussin
executed six water-colour pictures, representing the principal events
in the lives of these two personages. The merit of these works
attracted the attention of Signor Marini, a distinguished courtier of
the day. He was attached to the suit of Marie de Medicis, and held a
high place amongst the literary and artistic, as well as gay circles
of the court; his notice was therefore of importance to the artist,
who by it was introduced amongst the great, the learned, and the gay.

Wisely did he take advantage of mixing in this society to improve his
knowledge of men and things, and to satisfy that craving for
enlightenment which he felt equally when rambling in the fields,
standing at his easel, or sitting as a timid listener in the splendid
saloons of Signor Marini.

This pleasant life lasted for a year; Marini was his Mecaenas; orders
for paintings flowed in on him; and when, in 1625, his patron went to
Rome to visit Pope Urban VIII., Poussin would have accompanied him,
but for an honourable dread of breaking some engagements which he had
made. Amongst others, he had to finish a large piece representing the
_Death of the Virgin_, undertaken for the guild of goldsmiths, who
presented every year a picture to Notre-Dame.

Marini tried in vain to shake his resolution. Nicholas Poussin had
pledged his word, and nothing could make him break it--not even the
advantage of accomplishing, in the company and at the expense of the
generous Italian, that journey to Rome which had always formed his
most cherished day-dream. The following year, Poussin went to Rome,
and, to his great sorrow, found his kind patron suffering from a
malady which speedily terminated his life. Thus was the painter once
more thrown on his own resources in a city where he was a stranger;
but his was not a nature to be discouraged by adversity. There was
something grand in the serenity with which he spent days in examining
the wondrous statues of the olden time, while a cheerless attic was
his lodging, and his dinner depended on the generosity of a
printseller for whom he worked occasionally, and who was not always in
the humour to advance money.

Many years afterwards, Poussin, in speaking of this period, said to
Chantilon: 'I have sometimes gone to