olored with the
rainbow tints of light, drawn by the monitions of an inward voice, laid
bare by a divine finger which points to the past of its whole existence
as the source of its given expression. You clothe your women with
delicate skins and glorious draperies of hair, but where is the blood
which begets the passion or the peace of their souls, and is the cause
of what you call 'effects'? Your saint is a dark woman; but this, my
poor Porbus, belongs to a fair one. Your figures are pale, colored
phantoms, which you present to our eyes; and you call that painting!
art! Because you make something which looks more like a woman than a
house, you think you have touched the goal; proud of not being obliged
to write "currus venustus" or "pulcher homo" on the frame of your
picture, you think yourselves majestic artists like our great
forefathers. Ha, ha! you have not got there yet, my little men; you
will use up many a crayon and spoil many a canvas before you reach that
height. Undoubtedly a woman carries her head this way and her petticoats
that way; her eyes soften and droop with just that look of resigned
gentleness; the throbbing shadow of the eyelashes falls exactly thus
upon her cheek. That is it, and--that is _not it_. What lacks? A mere
nothing; but that mere nothing is _all_. You have given the shadow of
life, but you have not given its fulness, its being, its--I know not
what--soul, perhaps, which floats vaporously about the tabernacle of
flesh; in short, that flower of life which Raphael and Titian culled.
Start from the point you have now attained, and perhaps you may yet
paint a worthy picture; you grew weary too soon. Mediocrity will extol
your work; but the true artist smiles. O Mabuse! O my master!" added
this singular person, "you were a thief; you have robbed us of your
life, your knowledge, your art! But at least," he resumed after a pause,
"this picture is better than the paintings of that rascally Rubens, with
his mountains of Flemish flesh daubed with vermilion, his cascades of
red hair, and his hurly-burly of color. At any rate, you have got the
elements of color, drawing, and sentiment,--the three essential parts of
art."

"But the saint is sublime, good sir!" cried the young man in a loud
voice, waking from a deep reverie. "These figures, the saint and the
boatman, have a subtile meaning which the Italian painters cannot give.
I do not know one of them who could have invented that hesitation of the