I have chastely
hidden my joy? It would be prostitution! For ten years I have lived with
this woman; she is mine, mine alone! she loves me! Has she not smiled
upon me as, touch by touch, I painted her? She has a soul,--the soul
with which I endowed her. She would blush if other eyes than mine beheld
her. Let her be seen?--where is the husband, the lover, so debased as to
lend his wife to dishonor? When you paint a picture for the court you do
not put your whole soul into it; you sell to courtiers your tricked-out
lay-figures. My painting is not a picture; it is a sentiment, a passion!
Born in my atelier, she must remain a virgin there. She shall not leave
it unclothed. Poesy and women give themselves bare, like truth, to
lovers only. Have we the model of Raphael, the Angelica of Ariosto, the
Beatrice of Dante? No, we see but their semblance. Well, the work which
I keep hidden behind bolts and bars is an exception to all other art. It
is not a canvas; it is a woman,--a woman with whom I weep and laugh
and think and talk. Would you have me resign the joy of ten years, as I
might throw away a worn-out doublet? Shall I, in a moment, cease to
be father, lover, creator?--this woman is not a creature; she is my
creation. Bring your young man; I will give him my treasures,--paintings
of Correggio, Michael-Angelo, Titian; I will kiss the print of his feet
in the dust,--but make him my rival? Shame upon me! Ha! I am more a
lover than I am a painter. I shall have the strength to burn my Nut-girl
ere I render my last sigh; but suffer her to endure the glance of a man,
a young man, a painter?--No, no! I would kill on the morrow the man who
polluted her with a look! I would kill you,--you, my friend,--if you did
not worship her on your knees; and think you I would submit my idol to
the cold eyes and stupid criticisms of fools? Ah, love is a mystery! its
life is in the depths of the soul; it dies when a man says, even to his
friend, Here is she whom I love."

The old man seemed to renew his youth; his eyes had the brilliancy and
fire of life, his pale cheeks blushed a vivid red, his hands trembled.
Porbus, amazed by the passionate violence with which he uttered these
words, knew not how to answer a feeling so novel and yet so profound.
Was the old man under the thraldom of an artist's fancy? Or did these
ideas flow from the unspeakable fanaticism produced at times in every
mind by the long gestation of a noble work? Was it possible to