man," he continued,
striking Nicolas Poussin on the shoulder, "who has the faculty."

Observing the shabby cap of the youth, he pulled from his belt a
leathern purse from which he took two gold pieces and offered them to
him, saying,--

"I buy your drawing."

"Take them," said Porbus to Poussin, seeing that the latter trembled
and blushed with shame, for the young scholar had the pride of poverty;
"take them, he has the ransom of two kings in his pouch."

The three left the atelier and proceeded, talking all the way of art,
to a handsome wooden house standing near the Pont Saint-Michel, whose
window-casings and arabesque decoration amazed Poussin. The embryo
painter soon found himself in one of the rooms on the ground floor
seated, beside a good fire, at a table covered with appetizing dishes,
and, by unexpected good fortune, in company with two great artists who
treated him with kindly attention.

"Young man," said Porbus, observing that he was speechless, with his
eyes fixed on a picture, "do not look at that too long, or you will fall
into despair."

It was the Adam of Mabuse, painted by that wayward genius to enable him
to get out of the prison where his creditors had kept him so long. The
figure presented such fulness and force of reality that Nicolas Poussin
began to comprehend the meaning of the bewildering talk of the old man.
The latter looked at the picture with a satisfied but not enthusiastic
manner, which seemed to say, "I have done better myself."

"There is life in the form," he remarked. "My poor master surpassed
himself there; but observe the want of truth in the background. The
man is living, certainly; he rises and is coming towards us; but the
atmosphere, the sky, the air that we breathe, see, feel,--where are
they? Besides, that is only a man; and the being who came first from
the hand of God must needs have had something divine about him which
is lacking here. Mabuse said so himself with vexation in his sober
moments."

Poussin looked alternately at the old man and at Porbus with uneasy
curiosity. He turned to the latter as if to ask the name of their host,
but the painter laid a finger on his lips with an air of mystery, and
the young man, keenly interested, kept silence, hoping that sooner or
later some word of the conversation might enable him to guess the name
of the old man, whose wealth and genius were sufficiently attested by
the respect which Porbus showed him, and by the marvels