THE MADONNA OF THE FUTUREby Henry James

We had been talking about the masters who had achieved but a singlemasterpiece--the artists and poets who but once in their lives had knownthe divine afflatus and touched the high level of perfection. Our hosthad been showing us a charming little cabinet picture by a painter whosename we had never heard, and who, after this single spasmodic bid forfame, had apparently relapsed into obscurity and mediocrity. There wassome discussion as to the frequency of this phenomenon; during which, Iobserved, H--- sat silent, finishing his cigar with a meditative air, andlooking at the picture which was being handed round the table. "I don'tknow how common a case it is, " he said at last, "but I have seen it. Ihave known a poor fellow who painted his one masterpiece, and"--he addedwith a smile--"he didn't even paint that. He made his bid for fame andmissed it. " We all knew H--- for a clever man who had seen much of menand manners, and had a great stock of reminiscences. Some oneimmediately questioned him further, and while I was engrossed with theraptures of my neighbour over the little picture, he was induced to tellhis tale. If I were to doubt whether it would bear repeating, I shouldonly have to remember how that charming woman, our hostess, who had leftthe table, ventured back in rustling rose-colour to pronounce ourlingering a want of gallantry, and, finding us a listening circle, sankinto her chair in spite of our cigars, and heard the story out sograciously that, when the catastrophe was reached, she glanced across atme and showed me a tear in each of her beautiful eyes. 

* * * * *

It relates to my youth, and to Italy: two fine things! (H--- began). Ihad arrived late in the evening at Florence, and while I finished mybottle of wine at supper, had fancied that, tired traveller though I was, I might pay the city a finer compliment than by going vulgarly to bed. Anarrow passage wandered darkly away out of the little square before myhotel, and looked as if it bored into the heart of Florence. I followedit, and at the end of ten minutes emerged upon a great piazza, filledonly with the mild autumn moonlight. Opposite rose the Palazzo Vecchio, like some huge civic fortress, with the great bell-tower springing fromits embattled verge as a mountain-pine from the edge of a cliff. At itsbase, in its projected shadow, gleamed certain dim sculptures which Iwonderingly approached. One of the images, on the left of the palacedoor, was a magnificent colossus, shining through the dusky air like asentinel who has taken the alarm. In a moment I recognised him asMichael Angelo's _David_. I turned with a certain relief from hissinister strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed beneath thehigh light loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span of its archesto the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely andgraceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his lightnervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name isPerseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but inthe memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these finefellows to the other, I probably uttered some irrepressible commonplaceof praise, for, as if provoked by my voice, a man rose from the steps ofthe loggia, where he had been sitting in the shadow, and addressed me ingood English--a small, slim personage, clad in a sort of black velvettunic (as it seemed), and with a mass of auburn hair, which gleamed inthe moonlight, escaping from a little mediaeval birretta. In a tone ofthe most insinuating deference he asked me for my "impressions. " Heseemed picturesque, fantastic, slightly unreal. Hovering there in thisconsecrated neighbourhood, he might have passed for the genius ofaesthetic hospitality--if the genius of aesthetic hospitality were notcommonly some shabby little custode, flourishing a calicopocket-handkerchief and openly resentful of the divided franc. Thisanalogy was made none the less complete by the brilliant tirade withwhich he greeted my embarrassed silence. 

"I have known Florence long, sir, but I have never known her so lovely astonight. It's as if the ghosts of her past were abroad in the emptystreets. The present is sleeping; the past hovers about us like a dreammade visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling up in couples to passjudgment on the last performance of Michael, of Benvenuto! We shouldcome in for a precious lesson if we might overhear what they say. Theplainest burgher of them, in his cap and gown, had a taste in the matter!That was the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and hisbroad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyesclear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothingbut overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination aregone! But do you know I fancy--I fancy"--and he grew suddenly almostfamiliar in this visionary fervour--"I fancy the light of that time restsupon us here for an hour! I have never seen the David so grand, thePerseus so fair! Even the inferior productions of John of Bologna and ofBaccio Bandinelli seem to realise the artist's dream. I feel as if themoonlit air were charged with the secrets of the masters, and as if, standing here in religious attention, we might--we might witness arevelation!" Perceiving at this moment, I suppose, my haltingcomprehension reflected in my puzzled face, this interesting rhapsodistpaused and blushed. Then with a melancholy smile, "You think me amoonstruck charlatan, I suppose. It's not my habit to bang about thepiazza and pounce upon innocent tourists. But tonight, I confess, I amunder the charm. And then, somehow, I fancied you too were an artist!"

"I am not an artist, I am sorry to say, as you must understand the term. But pray make no apologies. I am also under the charm; your eloquentremarks have only deepened it. "

"If you are not an artist you are worthy to be one!" he rejoined, with anexpressive smile. "A young man who arrives at Florence late in theevening, and, instead of going prosaically to bed, or hanging over thetraveller's book at his hotel, walks forth without loss of time to payhis devoirs to the beautiful, is a young man after my own heart!"

The mystery was suddenly solved; my friend was an American! He must havebeen, to take the picturesque so prodigiously to heart. "None the lessso, I trust, " I answered, "if the young man is a sordid New Yorker. "

"New Yorkers have been munificent patrons of art!" he answered, urbanely. 

For a moment I was alarmed. Was this midnight reverie mere Yankeeenterprise, and was he simply a desperate brother of the brush who hadposted himself here to extort an "order" from a sauntering tourist? ButI was not called to defend myself. A great brazen note broke suddenlyfrom the far-off summit of the bell-tower above us, and sounded the firststroke of midnight. My companion started, apologised for detaining me, and prepared to retire. But he seemed to offer so lively a promise offurther entertainment that I was indisposed to part with him, andsuggested that we should stroll homeward together. He cordiallyassented; so we turned out of the Piazza, passed down before the statuedarcade of the Uffizi, and came out upon the Arno. What course we took Ihardly remember, but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companiondelivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. Ilistened in puzzled fascination, and wondered who the deuce he was. Heconfessed with a melancholy but all-respectful head-shake to his Americanorigin. 

"We are the disinherited of Art!" he cried. "We are condemned to besuperficial! We are excluded from the magic circle. The soil ofAmerican perception is a poor little barren artificial deposit. Yes! weare wedded to imperfection. An American, to excel, has just ten times asmuch to learn as a European. We lack the deeper sense. We have neithertaste, nor tact, nor power. How should we have them? Our crude andgarish climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the constantpressure about us of unlovely circumstance, are as void of all thatnourishes and prompts and inspires the artist, as my sad heart is void ofbitterness in saying so! We poor aspirants must live in perpetualexile. "

"You seem fairly at home in exile, " I answered, "and Florence seems to mea very pretty Siberia. But do you know my own thought? Nothing is soidle as to talk about our want of a nutritive soil, of opportunity, ofinspiration, and all the rest of it. The worthy part is to do somethingfine! There is no law in our glorious Constitution against that. Invent, create, achieve! No matter if you have to study fifty times as much asone of these! What else are you an artist for? Be you our Moses, " Iadded, laughing, and laying my hand on his shoulder, "and lead us out ofthe house of bondage!"

"Golden words--golden words, young man!" he cried, with a tender smile. "'Invent, create, achieve!' Yes, that's our business; I know it well. Don't take me, in Heaven's name, for one of your barrencomplainers--impotent cynics who have neither talent nor faith! I am atwork!"--and he glanced about him and lowered his voice as if this were aquite peculiar secret--"I'm at work night and day. I have undertaken a_creation_! I am no Moses; I am only a poor patient artist; but it wouldbe a fine thing if I were to cause some slender stream of beauty to flowin our thirsty land! Don't think me a monster of conceit, " he went on, as he saw me smile at the avidity with which he adopted my illustration;"I confess that I am in one of those moods when great things seempossible! This is one of my nervous nights--I dream waking! When thesouth wind blows over Florence at midnight it seems to coax the soul fromall the fair things locked away in her churches and galleries; it comesinto my own little studio with the moonlight, and sets my heart beatingtoo deeply for rest. You see I am always adding a thought to myconception! This evening I felt that I couldn't sleep unless I hadcommuned with the genius of Buonarotti!"

He seemed deeply versed in local history and tradition, and he expatiated_con amore_ on the charms of Florence. I gathered that he was an oldresident, and that he had taken the lovely city into his heart. "I oweher everything, " he declared. "It's only since I came here that I havereally lived, intellectually. One by one, all profane desires, all mereworldly aims, have dropped away from me, and left me nothing but mypencil, my little note-book" (and he tapped his breast-pocket), "and theworship of the pure masters--those who were pure because they wereinnocent, and those who were pure because they were strong!"

"And have you been very productive all this time?" I askedsympathetically. 

He was silent a while before replying. "Not in the vulgar sense!" hesaid at last. "I have chosen never to manifest myself by imperfection. The good in every performance I have re-absorbed into the generativeforce of new creations; the bad--there is always plenty of that--I havereligiously destroyed. I may say, with some satisfaction, that I havenot added a mite to the rubbish of the world. As a proof of myconscientiousness"--and he stopped short, and eyed me with extraordinarycandour, as if the proof were to be overwhelming--"I have never sold apicture! 'At least no merchant traffics in my heart!' Do you rememberthat divine line in Browning? My little studio has never been profanedby superficial, feverish, mercenary work. It's a temple of labour, butof leisure! Art is long. If we work for ourselves, of course we musthurry. If we work for her, we must often pause. She can wait!"

This had brought us to my hotel door, somewhat to my relief, I confess, for I had begun to feel unequal to the society of a genius of this heroicstrain. I left him, however, not without expressing a friendly hope thatwe should meet again. The next morning my curiosity had not abated; Iwas anxious to see him by common daylight. I counted upon meeting him inone of the many pictorial haunts of Florence, and I was gratified withoutdelay. I found him in the course of the morning in the Tribune of theUffizi--that little treasure-chamber of world-famous things. He hadturned his back on the Venus de' Medici, and with his arms resting on therail-mug which protects the pictures, and his head buried in his hands, he was lost in the contemplation of that superb triptych of AndreaMantegna--a work which has neither the material splendour nor thecommanding force of some of its neighbours, but which, glowing there withthe loveliness of patient labour, suits possibly a more constant need ofthe soul. I looked at the picture for some time over his shoulder; atlast, with a heavy sigh, he turned away and our eyes met. As herecognised me a deep blush rose to his face; he fancied, perhaps, that hehad made a fool of himself overnight. But I offered him my hand with afriendliness which assured him I was not a scoffer. I knew him by hisardent _chevelure_; otherwise he was much altered. His midnight mood wasover, and he looked as haggard as an actor by daylight. He was far olderthan I had supposed, and he had less bravery of costume and gesture. Heseemed the quiet, poor, patient artist he had proclaimed himself, and thefact that he had never sold a picture was more obvious than glorious. Hisvelvet coat was threadbare, and his short slouched hat, of an antiquepattern, revealed a rustiness which marked it an "original, " and not oneof the picturesque reproductions which brethren of his craft affect. Hiseye was mild and heavy, and his expression singularly gentle andacquiescent; the more so for a certain pallid leanness of visage, which Ihardly knew whether to refer to the consuming fire of genius or to ameagre diet. A very little talk, however, cleared his brow and broughtback his eloquence. 

"And this is your first visit to these enchanted halls?" he cried. "Happy, thrice happy youth!" And taking me by the arm, he prepared tolead me to each of the pre-eminent works in turn and show me the cream ofthe gallery. But before we left the Mantegna he pressed my arm and gaveit a loving look. "_He_ was not in a hurry, " he murmured. "He knewnothing of 'raw Haste, half-sister to Delay!'" How sound a critic myfriend was I am unable to say, but he was an extremely amusing one;overflowing with opinions, theories, and sympathies, with disquisitionand gossip and anecdote. He was a shade too sentimental for my ownsympathies, and I fancied he was rather too fond of superfinediscriminations and of discovering subtle intentions in shallow places. At moments, too, he plunged into the sea of metaphysics, and floundered awhile in waters too deep for intellectual security. But his aboundingknowledge and happy judgment told a touching story of long attentivehours in this worshipful company; there was a reproach to my wastefulsaunterings in so devoted a culture of opportunity. "There are twomoods, " I remember his saying, "in which we may walk throughgalleries--the critical and the ideal. They seize us at their pleasure, and we can never tell which is to take its turn. The critical mood, oddly, is the genial one, the friendly, the condescending. It relishesthe pretty trivialities of art, its vulgar cleverness, its consciousgraces. It has a kindly greeting for anything which looks as if, according to his light, the painter had enjoyed doing it--for the littleDutch cabbages and kettles, for the taper fingers and breezy mantles oflate-coming Madonnas, for the little blue-hilled, pastoral, scepticalItalian landscapes. Then there are the days of fierce, fastidiouslonging--solemn church feasts of the intellect--when all vulgar effortand all petty success is a weariness, and everything but the best--thebest of the best--disgusts. In these hours we are relentless aristocratsof taste. We will not take Michael Angelo for granted, we will notswallow Raphael whole!"

The gallery of the Uffizi is not only rich in its possessions, butpeculiarly fortunate in that fine architectural accident, as one may callit, which unites it--with the breadth of river and city between them--tothose princely chambers of the Pitti Palace. The Louvre and the Vaticanhardly give you such a sense of sustained inclosure as those longpassages projected over street and stream to establish a sort ofinviolate transition between the two palaces of art. We passed along thegallery in which those precious drawings by eminent hands hang chaste andgray above the swirl and murmur of the yellow Arno, and reached the ducalsaloons of the Pitti. Ducal as they are, it must be confessed that theyare imperfect as show-rooms, and that, with their deep-set windows andtheir massive mouldings, it is rather a broken light that reaches thepictured walls. But here the masterpieces hang thick, and you seem tosee them in a luminous atmosphere of their own. And the great saloons, with their superb dim ceilings, their outer wall in splendid shadow, andthe sombre opposite glow of mellow canvas and dusky gilding, make, themselves, almost as fine a picture as the Titians and Raphaels theyimperfectly reveal. We lingered briefly before many a Raphael andTitian; but I saw my friend was impatient, and I suffered him at last tolead me directly to the goal of our journey--the most tenderly fair ofRaphael's virgins, the Madonna in the Chair. Of all the fine pictures ofthe world, it seemed to me this is the one with which criticism has leastto do. None betrays less effort, less of the mechanism of success and ofthe irrepressible discord between conception and result, which showsdimly in so many consummate works. Graceful, human, near to oursympathies as it is, it has nothing of manner, of method, nothing, almost, of style; it blooms there in rounded softness, as instinct withharmony as if it were an immediate exhalation of genius. The figuremelts away the spectator's mind into a sort of passionate tendernesswhich he knows not whether he has given to heavenly purity or to earthlycharm. He is intoxicated with the fragrance of the tenderest blossom ofmaternity that ever bloomed on earth. 

"That's what I call a fine picture, " said my companion, after we hadgazed a while in silence. "I have a right to say so, for I have copiedit so often and so carefully that I could repeat it now with my eyesshut. Other works are of Raphael: this _is_ Raphael himself. Others youcan praise, you can qualify, you can measure, explain, account for: thisyou can only love and admire. I don't know in what seeming he walkedamong men while this divine mood was upon him; but after it, surely, hecould do nothing but die; this world had nothing more to teach him. Thinkof it a while, my friend, and you will admit that I am not raving. Thinkof his seeing that spotless image, not for a moment, for a day, in ahappy dream, or a restless fever-fit; not as a poet in a five minutes'frenzy--time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal stanza; butfor days together, while the slow labour of the brush went on, while thefoul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! But ah!what a seer!"

"Don't you imagine, " I answered, "that he had a model, and that somepretty young woman--"

"As pretty a young woman as you please! It doesn't diminish the miracle!He took his hint, of course, and the young woman, possibly, sat smilingbefore his canvas. But, meanwhile, the painter's idea had taken wings. No lovely human outline could charm it to vulgar fact. He saw the fairform made perfect; he rose to the vision without tremor, without effortof wing; he communed with it face to face, and resolved into finer andlovelier truth the purity which completes it as the fragrance completesthe rose. That's what they call idealism; the word's vastly abused, butthe thing is good. It's my own creed, at any rate. Lovely Madonna, model at once and muse, I call you to witness that I too am an idealist!"

"An idealist, then, " I said, half jocosely, wishing to provoke him tofurther utterance, "is a gentleman who says to Nature in the person of abeautiful girl, 'Go to, you are all wrong! Your fine is coarse, yourbright is dim, your grace is _gaucherie_. This is the way you shouldhave done it!' Is not the chance against him?"

He turned upon me almost angrily, but perceiving the genial savour of mysarcasm, he smiled gravely. "Look at that picture, " he said, "and ceaseyour irreverent mockery! Idealism is _that_! There's no explaining it;one must feel the flame! It says nothing to Nature, or to any beautifulgirl, that they will not both forgive! It says to the fair woman, 'Accept me as your artist friend, lend me your beautiful face, trust me, help me, and your eyes shall be half my masterpiece!' No one so lovesand respects the rich realities of nature as the artist whose imaginationcaresses and flatters them. He knows what a fact may hold (whetherRaphael knew, you may judge by his portrait, behind us there, of TommasoInghirami); bad his fancy hovers above it, as Anal hovered above thesleeping prince. There is only one Raphael, bad an artist may still bean artist. As I said last night, the days of illumination are gone;visions are rare; we have to look long to see them. But in meditation wemay still cultivate the ideal; round it, smooth it, perfect it. Theresult--the result, " (here his voice faltered suddenly, and he fixed hiseyes for a moment on the picture; when they met my own again they werefull of tears)--"the result may be less than this; but still it may begood, it may be _great_!" he cried with vehemence. "It may hangsomewhere, in after years, in goodly company, and keep the artist'smemory warm. Think of being known to mankind after some such fashion asthis! of hanging here through the slow centuries in the gaze of analtered world; living on and on in the cunning of an eye and hand thatare part of the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote generations;making beauty a force and purity an example!"

"Heaven forbid, " I said, smiling, "that I should take the wind out ofyour sails! But doesn't it occur to you that, besides being strong inhis genius, Raphael was happy in a certain good faith of which we havelost the trick? There are people, I know, who deny that his spotlessMadonnas are anything more than pretty blondes of that period enhanced bythe Raphaelesque touch, which they declare is a profane touch. Be thatas it may, people's religious and aesthetic needs went arm in arm, andthere was, as I may say, a demand for the Blessed Virgin, visible andadorable, which must have given firmness to the artist's hand. I amafraid there is no demand now. "

My companion seemed painfully puzzled; he shivered, as it were, in thischilling blast of scepticism. Then shaking his head with sublimeconfidence--"There is always a demand!" he cried; "that ineffable type isone of the eternal needs of man's heart; but pious souls long for it insilence, almost in shame. Let it appear, and their faith grows brave. How _should_ it appear in this corrupt generation? It cannot be made toorder. It could, indeed, when the order came, trumpet-toned, from thelips of the Church herself, and was addressed to genius panting withinspiration. But it can spring now only from the soil of passionatelabour and culture. Do you really fancy that while, from time to time, aman of complete artistic vision is born into the world, that image canperish? The man who paints it has painted everything. The subjectadmits of every perfection--form, colour, expression, composition. Itcan be as simple as you please, and yet as rich; as broad and pure, andyet as full of delicate detail. Think of the chance for flesh in thelittle naked, nestling child, irradiating divinity; of the chance fordrapery in the chaste and ample garment of the mother! think of the greatstory you compress into that simple theme! Think, above all, of themother's face and its ineffable suggestiveness, of the mingled burden ofjoy and trouble, the tenderness turned to worship, and the worship turnedto far-seeing pity! Then look at it all in perfect line and lovelycolour, breathing truth and beauty and mastery!"

"Anch' io son pittore!" I cried. "Unless I am mistaken, you have amasterpiece on the stocks. If you put all that in, you will do more thanRaphael himself did. Let me know when your picture is finished, andwherever in the wide world I may be, I will post back to Florence and paymy respects to--the _Madonna of the future_!"

He blushed vividly and gave a heavy sigh, half of protest, half ofresignation. "I don't often mention my picture by name. I detest thismodern custom of premature publicity. A great work needs silence, privacy, mystery even. And then, do you know, people are so cruel, sofrivolous, so unable to imagine a man's wishing to paint a Madonna atthis time of day, that I have been laughed at--laughed at, sir!" and hisblush deepened to crimson. "I don't know what has prompted me to be sofrank and trustful with you. You look as if you wouldn't laugh at me. Mydear young man"--and he laid his hand on my arm--"I am worthy of respect. Whatever my talents may be, I am honest. There is nothing grotesque in apure ambition, or in a life devoted to it. "

There was something so sternly sincere in his look and tone that furtherquestions seemed impertinent. I had repeated opportunity to ask them, however, for after this we spent much time together. Daily for afortnight, we met by appointment, to see the sights. He knew the city sowell, he had strolled and lounged so often through its streets andchurches and galleries, he was so deeply versed in its greater and lessermemories, so imbued with the local genius, that he was an altogetherideal _valet de place_, and I was glad enough to leave my Murray at home, and gather facts and opinions alike from his gossiping commentary. Hetalked of Florence like a lover, and admitted that it was a very oldaffair; he had lost his heart to her at first sight. "It's the fashionto talk of all cities as feminine, " he said, "but, as a rule, it's amonstrous mistake. Is Florence of the same sex as New York, as Chicago?She is the sole perfect lady of them all; one feels towards her as a ladin his teens feels to some beautiful older woman with a 'history. ' Shefills you with a sort of aspiring gallantry. " This disinterested passionseemed to stand my friend in stead of the common social ties; he led alonely life, and cared for nothing but his work. I was duly flattered byhis having taken my frivolous self into his favour, and by his generoussacrifice of precious hours to my society. We spent many of these hoursamong those early paintings in which Florence is so rich, returning everand anon, with restless sympathies, to wonder whether these tenderblossoms of art had not a vital fragrance and savour more precious thanthe full-fruited knowledge of the later works. We lingered often in thesepulchral chapel of San Lorenzo, and watched Michael Angelo'sdim-visaged warrior sitting there like some awful Genius of Doubt andbrooding behind his eternal mask upon the mysteries of life. We stoodmore than once in the little convent chambers where Fra Angelico wroughtas if an angel indeed had held his hand, and gathered that sense ofscattered dews and early bird-notes which makes an hour among his relicsseem like a morning stroll in some monkish garden. We did all this andmuch more--wandered into dark chapels, damp courts, and dustypalace-rooms, in quest of lingering hints of fresco and lurking treasuresof carving. 

I was more and more impressed with my companion's remarkable singlenessof purpose. Everything was a pretext for some wildly idealistic rhapsodyor reverie. Nothing could be seen or said that did not lead him sooneror later to a glowing discourse on the true, the beautiful, and the good. If my friend was not a genius, he was certainly a monomaniac; and I foundas great a fascination in watching the odd lights and shades of hischaracter as if he had been a creature from another planet. He seemed, indeed, to know very little of this one, and lived and moved altogetherin his own little province of art. A creature more unsullied by theworld it is impossible to conceive, and I often thought it a flaw in hisartistic character that he had not a harmless vice or two. It amused megreatly at times to think that he was of our shrewd Yankee race; but, after all, there could be no better token of his American origin thanthis high aesthetic fever. The very heat of his devotion was a sign ofconversion; those born to European opportunity manage better to reconcileenthusiasm with comfort. He had, moreover, all our native mistrust forintellectual discretion, and our native relish for sonorous superlatives. As a critic he was very much more generous than just, and his mildestterms of approbation were "stupendous, " "transcendent, " and"incomparable. " The small change of admiration seemed to him no coin fora gentleman to handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually, he waspersonally altogether a mystery. His professions, somehow, were all half-professions, and his allusions to his work and circumstances leftsomething dimly ambiguous in the background. He was modest and proud, and never spoke of his domestic matters. He was evidently poor; yet hemust have had some slender independence, since he could afford to make somerry over the fact that his culture of ideal beauty had never broughthim a penny. His poverty, I supposed, was his motive for neitherinviting me to his lodging nor mentioning its whereabouts. We met eitherin some public place or at my hotel, where I entertained him as freely asI might without appearing to be prompted by charity. He seemed alwayshungry, and this was his nearest approach to human grossness. I made apoint of asking no impertinent questions, but, each time we met, Iventured to make some respectful allusion to the _magnum opus_, toinquire, as it were, as to its health and progress. "We are getting on, with the Lord's help, " he would say, with a grave smile. "We are doingwell. You see, I have the grand advantage that I lose no time. Thesehours I spend with you are pure profit. They are _suggestive_! Just asthe truly religious soul is always at worship, the genuine artist isalways in labour. He takes his property wherever he finds it, and learnssome precious secret from every object that stands up in the light. Ifyou but knew the rapture of observation! I gather with every glance somehint for light, for colour, or relief! When I get home, I pour out mytreasures into the lap of toy Madonna. Oh, I am not idle! _Nulla diessine linea_. "

I was introduced in Florence to an American lady whose drawing-room hadlong formed an attractive place of reunion for the foreign residents. Shelived on a fourth floor, and she was not rich; but she offered hervisitors very good tea, little cakes at option, and conversation notquite to match. Her conversation had mainly an aesthetic flavour, forMrs. Coventry was famously "artistic. " Her apartment was a sort of PittiPalace _au petit pied_. She possessed "early masters" by the dozen--acluster of Peruginos in her dining-room, a Giotto in her boudoir, anAndrea del Sarto over her drawing-room chimney-piece. Surrounded bythese treasures, and by innumerable bronzes, mosaics, majolica dishes, and little worm-eaten diptychs covered with angular saints on gildedbackgrounds, our hostess enjoyed the dignity of a sort of high-priestessof the arts. She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature copy of theMadonna della Seggiola. Gaining her ear quietly one evening, I asked herwhether she knew that remarkable man, Mr. Theobald. 

"Know him!" she exclaimed; "know poor Theobald! All Florence knows him, his flame-coloured locks, his black velvet coat, his interminableharangues on the beautiful, and his wondrous Madonna that mortal eye hasnever seen, and that mortal patience has quite given up expecting. "

"Really, " I cried, "you don't believe in his Madonna?"

"My dear ingenuous youth, " rejoined my shrewd friend, "has he made aconvert of you? Well, we all believed in him once; he came down uponFlorence and took the town by storm. Another Raphael, at the very least, had been born among men, and the poor dear United States were to have thecredit of him. Hadn't he the very hair of Raphael flowing down on hisshoulders? The hair, alas, but not the head! We swallowed him whole, however; we hung upon his lips and proclaimed his genius on the house-tops. The women were all dying to sit to him for their portraits and bemade immortal, like Leonardo's Joconde. We decided that his manner was agood deal like Leonardo's--mysterious, and inscrutable, and fascinating. Mysterious it certainly was; mystery was the beginning and the end of it. The months passed by, and the miracle hung fire; our master neverproduced his masterpiece. He passed hours in the galleries and churches, posturing, musing, and gazing; he talked more than ever about thebeautiful, but he never put brush to canvas. We had all subscribed, asit were, to the great performance; but as it never came off people beganto ask for their money again. I was one of the last of the faithful; Icarried devotion so far as to sit to him for my head. If you could haveseen the horrible creature he made of me, you would admit that even awoman with no more vanity than will tie her bonnet straight must havecooled off then. The man didn't know the very alphabet of drawing! Hisstrong point, he intimated, was his sentiment; but is it a consolation, when one has been painted a fright, to know it has been done withpeculiar gusto? One by one, I confess, we fell away from the faith, andMr. Theobald didn't lift his little finger to preserve us. At the firsthint that we were tired of waiting, and that we should like the show tobegin, he was off in a huff. 'Great work requires time, contemplation, privacy, mystery! O ye of little faith!' We answered that we didn'tinsist on a great work; that the five-act tragedy might come at hisconvenience; that we merely asked for something to keep us from yawning, some inexpensive little _lever de rideau_. Hereupon the poor man tookhis stand as a genius misconceived and persecuted, an _ame meconnue_, andwashed his hands of us from that hour! No, I believe he does me thehonour to consider me the head and front of the conspiracy formed to niphis glory in the bud--a bud that has taken twenty years to blossom. Askhim if he knows me, and he will tell you I am a horribly ugly old woman, who has vowed his destruction because he won't paint her portrait as apendant to Titian's Flora. I fancy that since then he has had none butchance followers, innocent strangers like yourself, who have taken him athis word. The mountain is still in labour; I have not heard that themouse has been born. I pass him once in a while in the galleries, and hefixes his great dark eyes on me with a sublimity of indifference, as if Iwere a bad copy of a Sassoferrato! It is a long time ago now that Iheard that he was making studies for a Madonna who was to be a _resume_of all the other Madonnas of the Italian school--like that antique Venuswho borrowed a nose from one great image and an ankle from another. It'scertainly a masterly idea. The parts may be fine, but when I think of myunhappy portrait I tremble for the whole. He has communicated thisstriking idea under the pledge of solemn secrecy to fifty chosen spirits, to every one he has ever been able to button-hole for five minutes. Isuppose he wants to get an order for it, and he is not to blame; forHeaven knows how he lives. I see by your blush, " my hostess franklycontinued, "that you have been honoured with his confidence. You needn'tbe ashamed, my dear young man; a man of your age is none the worse for acertain generous credulity. Only allow me to give you a word of advice:keep your credulity out of your pockets! Don't pay for the picture tillit's delivered. You have not been treated to a peep at it, I imagine! Nomore have your fifty predecessors in the faith. There are people whodoubt whether there is any picture to be seen. I fancy, myself, that ifone were to get into his studio, one would find something very like thepicture in that tale of Balzac's--a mere mass of incoherent scratches anddaubs, a jumble of dead paint!"

I listened to this pungent recital in silent wonder. It had a painfullyplausible sound, and was not inconsistent with certain shy suspicions ofmy own. My hostess was not only a clever woman, but presumably agenerous one. I determined to let my judgment wait upon events. Possiblyshe was right; but if she was wrong, she was cruelly wrong! Her versionof my friend's eccentricities made me impatient to see him again andexamine him in the light of public opinion. On our next meeting Iimmediately asked him if he knew Mrs. Coventry. He laid his hand on myarm and gave me a sad smile. "Has she taxed _your_ gallantry at last?"he asked. "She's a foolish woman. She's frivolous and heartless, andshe pretends to be serious and kind. She prattles about Giotto's secondmanner and Vittoria Colonna's liaison with 'Michael'--one would thinkthat Michael lived across the way and was expected in to take a hand atwhist--but she knows as little about art, and about the conditions ofproduction, as I know about Buddhism. She profanes sacred words, " headded more vehemently, after a pause. "She cares for you only as someone to band teacups in that horrible mendacious little parlour of hers, with its trumpery Peruginos! If you can't dash off a new picture everythree days, and let her hand it round among her guests, she tells them inplain English that you are an impostor!"

This attempt of mine to test Mrs. Coventry's accuracy was made in thecourse of a late afternoon walk to the quiet old church of San Miniato, on one of the hill-tops which directly overlook the city, from whosegates you are guided to it by a stony and cypress-bordered walk, whichseems a very fitting avenue to a shrine. No spot is more propitious tolingering repose than the broad terrace in front of the church, where, lounging against the parapet, you may glance in slow alternation from theblack and yellow marbles of the church facade, seamed and cracked withtime and wind-sown with a tender flora of its own, down to the full domesand slender towers of Florence and over to the blue sweep of the wide-mouthed cup of mountains into whose hollow the little treasure city hasbeen dropped. I had proposed, as a diversion from the painful memoriesevoked by Mrs. Coventry's name, that Theobald should go with me the nextevening to the opera, where some rarely-played work was to be given. Hedeclined, as I half expected, for I observed that he regularly kept hisevenings in reserve, and never alluded to his manner of passing them. "You have reminded me before, " I said, smiling, "of that charming speechof the Florentine painter in Alfred de Musset's 'Lorenzaccio': 'I do noharm to anyone. I pass my days in my studio, On Sunday I go to theAnnunziata or to Santa Mario; the monks think I have a voice; they dressme in a white gown and a red cap, and I take a share in the choruses;sometimes I do a little solo: these are the only times I go into public. In the evening, I visit my sweetheart; when the night is fine, we pass iton her balcony. ' I don't know whether you have a sweetheart, or whethershe has a balcony. But if you are so happy, it's certainly better thantrying to find a charm in a third-rate prima donna. "

He made no immediate response, but at last he turned to me solemnly. "Canyou look upon a beautiful woman with reverent eyes?"

"Really, " I said, "I don't pretend to be sheepish, but I should be sorryto think I was impudent. " And I asked him what in the world he meant. When at last I had assured him that I could undertake to temperadmiration with respect, he informed me, with an air of religiousmystery, that it was in his power to introduce me to the most beautifulwoman in Italy--"A beauty with a soul!"

"Upon my word, " I cried, "you are extremely fortunate, and that is a mostattractive description. "

"This woman's beauty, " he went on, "is a lesson, a morality, a poem! It'smy daily study. "

Of course, after this, I lost no time in reminding him of what, before weparted, had taken the shape of a promise. "I feel somehow, " he had said, "as if it were a sort of violation of that privacy in which I have alwayscontemplated her beauty. This is friendship, my friend. No hint of herexistence has ever fallen from my lips. But with too great a familiaritywe are apt to lose a sense of the real value of things, and you perhapswill throw some new light upon it and offer a fresher interpretation. "

We went accordingly by appointment to a certain ancient house in theheart of Florence--the precinct of the Mercato Vecchio--and climbed adark, steep staircase, to the very summit of the edifice. Theobald'sbeauty seemed as loftily exalted above the line of common vision as hisartistic ideal was lifted above the usual practice of men. He passedwithout knocking into the dark vestibule of a small apartment, and, flinging open an inner door, ushered me into a small saloon. The roomseemed mean and sombre, though I caught a glimpse of white curtainsswaying gently at an open window. At a table, near a lamp, sat a womandressed in black, working at a piece of embroidery. As Theobald enteredshe looked up calmly, with a smile; but seeing me she made a movement ofsurprise, and rose with a kind of stately grace. Theobald steppedforward, took her hand and kissed it, with an indescribable air ofimmemorial usage. As he bent his head she looked at me askance, and Ithought she blushed. 

"Behold the Serafina!" said Theobald, frankly, waving me forward. "Thisis a friend, and a lover of the arts, " he added, introducing me. Ireceived a smile, a curtsey, and a request to be seated. 

The most beautiful woman in Italy was a person of a generous Italian typeand of a great simplicity of demeanour. Seated again at her lamp, withher embroidery, she seemed to have nothing whatever to say. Theobald, bending towards her in a sort of Platonic ecstasy, asked her a dozenpaternally tender questions as to her health, her state of mind, heroccupations, and the progress of her embroidery, which he examinedminutely and summoned me to admire. It was some portion of anecclesiastical vestment--yellow satin wrought with an elaborate design ofsilver and gold. She made answer in a full rich voice, but with abrevity which I hesitated whether to attribute to native reserve or tothe profane constraint of my presence. She had been that morning toconfession; she had also been to market, and had bought a chicken fordinner. She felt very happy; she had nothing to complain of except thatthe people for whom she was making her vestment, and who furnished hermaterials, should be willing to put such rotten silver thread into thegarment, as one might say, of the Lord. From time to time, as she tookher slow stitches, she raised her eyes and covered me with a glance whichseemed at first to denote a placid curiosity, but in which, as I saw itrepeated, I thought I perceived the dim glimmer of an attempt toestablish an understanding with me at the expense of our companion. Meanwhile, as mindful as possible of Theobald's injunction of reverence, I considered the lady's personal claims to the fine compliment he hadpaid her. 

That she was indeed a beautiful woman I perceived, after recovering fromthe surprise of finding her without the freshness of youth. Her beautywas of a sort which, in losing youth, loses little of its essentialcharm, expressed for the most part as it was in form and structure, and, as Theobald would have said, in "composition. " She was broad and ample, low-browed and large-eyed, dark and pale. Her thick brown hair hung lowbeside her cheek and ear, and seemed to drape her head with a covering aschaste and formal as the veil of a nun. The poise and carriage of herhead were admirably free and noble, and they were the more effective thattheir freedom was at moments discreetly corrected by a littlesanctimonious droop, which harmonised admirably with the level gaze ofher dark and quiet eye. A strong, serene, physical nature, and theplacid temper which comes of no nerves and no troubles, seemed thislady's comfortable portion. She was dressed in plain dull black, savefor a sort of dark blue kerchief which was folded across her bosom andexposed a glimpse of her massive throat. Over this kerchief wassuspended a little silver cross. I admired her greatly, and yet with alarge reserve. A certain mild intellectual apathy belonged properly toher type of beauty, and had always seemed to round and enrich it; butthis _bourgeoise_ Egeria, if I viewed her right, betrayed a rather vulgarstagnation of mind. There might have been once a dim spiritual light inher face; but it had long since begun to wane. And furthermore, in plainprose, she was growing stout. My disappointment amounted very nearly tocomplete disenchantment when Theobald, as if to facilitate my covertinspection, declaring that the lamp was very dim, and that she would ruinher eyes without more light, rose and fetched a couple of candles fromthe mantelpiece, which he placed lighted on the table. In this brighterillumination I perceived that our hostess was decidedly an elderly woman. She was neither haggard, nor worn, nor gray; she was simply coarse. The"soul" which Theobald had promised seemed scarcely worth making such apoint of; it was no deeper mystery than a sort of matronly mildness oflip and brow. I should have been ready even to declare that thatsanctified bend of the head was nothing more than the trick of a personconstantly working at embroidery. It occurred to me even that it was atrick of a less innocent sort; for, in spite of the mellow quietude ofher wits, this stately needlewoman dropped a hint that she took thesituation rather less seriously than her friend. When he rose to lightthe candles she looked across at me with a quick, intelligent smile, andtapped her forehead with her forefinger; then, as from a sudden feelingof compassionate loyalty to poor Theobald, I preserved a blank face, shegave a little shrug and resumed her work. 

What was the relation of this singular couple? Was he the most ardent offriends or the most reverent of lovers? Did she regard him as aneccentric swain, whose benevolent admiration of her beauty she was notill pleased to humour at this small cost of having him climb into herlittle parlour and gossip of summer nights? With her decent and sombredress, her simple gravity, and that fine piece of priestly needlework, she looked like some pious lay-member of a sisterhood, living by specialpermission outside her convent walls. Or was she maintained here aloftby her friend in comfortable leisure, so that he might have before himthe perfect, eternal type, uncorrupted and untarnished by the strugglefor existence? Her shapely hands, I observed, wore very fair and white;they lacked the traces of what is called honest toil. 

"And the pictures, how do they come on?" she asked of Theobald, after along pause. 

"Finely, finely! I have here a friend whose sympathy and encouragementgive me new faith and ardour. "

Our hostess turned to me, gazed at me a moment rather inscrutably, andthen tapping her forehead with the gesture she had used a minute before, "He has a magnificent genius!" she said, with perfect gravity. 

"I am inclined to think so, " I answered, with a smile. 

"Eh, why do you smile?" she cried. "If you doubt it, you must see the_bambino_!" And she took the lamp and conducted me to the other side ofthe room, where on the wall, in a plain black frame, hung a large drawingin red chalk. Beneath it was fastened a little howl for holy water. Thedrawing represented a very young child, entirely naked, half nestlingback against his mother's gown, but with his two little armsoutstretched, as if in the act of benediction. It was executed withsingular freedom and power, and yet seemed vivid with the sacred bloom ofinfancy. A sort of dimpled elegance and grace, mingled with itsboldness, recalled the touch of Correggio. "That's what he can do!" saidmy hostess. "It's the blessed little boy whom I lost. It's his veryimage, and the Signor Teobaldo gave it me as a gift. He has given memany things besides!"

I looked at the picture for some time and admired it immensely. Turningback to Theobald I assured him that if it were hung among the drawings inthe Uffizi and labelled with a glorious name it would hold its own. Mypraise seemed to give him extreme pleasure; he pressed my hands, and hiseyes filled with tears. It moved him apparently with the desire toexpatiate on the history of the drawing, for he rose and made his adieuxto our companion, kissing her band with the same mild ardour as before. It occurred to me that the offer of a similar piece of gallantry on myown part might help me to know what manner of woman she was. When sheperceived my intention she withdrew her hand, dropped her eyes solemnly, and made me a severe curtsey. Theobald took my arm and led me rapidlyinto the street. 

"And what do you think of the divine Serafina?" he cried with fervour. 

"It is certainly an excellent style of good looks!" I answered. 

He eyed me an instant askance, and then seemed hurried along by thecurrent of remembrance. "You should have seen the mother and the childtogether, seen them as I first saw them--the mother with her head drapedin a shawl, a divine trouble in her face, and the bambino pressed to herbosom. You would have said, I think, that Raphael had found his match incommon chance. I was coming in, one summer night, from a long walk inthe country, when I met this apparition at the city gate. The woman heldout her hand. I hardly knew whether to say, 'What do you want?' or tofall down and worship. She asked for a little money. I saw that she wasbeautiful and pale; she might have stepped out of the stable ofBethlehem! I gave her money and helped her on her way into the town. Ihad guessed her story. She, too, was a maiden mother, and she had beenturned out into the world in her shame. I felt in all my pulses thathere was my subject marvellously realised. I felt like one of the oldmonkish artists who had had a vision. I rescued the poor creatures, cherished them, watched them as I would have done some precious work ofart, some lovely fragment of fresco discovered in a mouldering cloister. In a month--as if to deepen and sanctify the sadness and sweetness of itall--the poor little child died. When she felt that he was going sheheld him up to me for ten minutes, and I made that sketch. You saw afeverish haste in it, I suppose; I wanted to spare the poor little mortalthe pain of his position. After that I doubly valued the mother. She isthe simplest, sweetest, most natural creature that ever bloomed in thisbrave old land of Italy. She lives in the memory of her child, in hergratitude for the scanty kindness I have been able to show her, and inher simple religion! She is not even conscious of her beauty; myadmiration has never made her vain. Heaven knows that I have made nosecret of it. You must have observed the singular transparency of herexpression, the lovely modesty of her glance. And was there ever such atruly virginal brow, such a natural classic elegance in the wave of thehair and the arch of the forehead? I have studied her; I may say I knowher. I have absorbed her little by little; my mind is stamped andimbued, and I have determined now to clinch the impression; I shall atlast invite her to sit for me!"

"'At last--at last'?" I repeated, in much amazement. "Do you mean thatshe has never done so yet?"

"I have not really had--a--a sitting, " said Theobald, speaking veryslowly. "I have taken notes, you know; I have got my grand fundamentalimpression. That's the great thing! But I have not actually had her asa model, posed and draped and lighted, before my easel. "

What had become for the moment of my perception and my tact I am at aloss to say; in their absence I was unable to repress a headlongexclamation. I was destined to regret it. We had stopped at a turning, beneath a lamp. "My poor friend, " I exclaimed, laying my hand on hisshoulder, "you have _dawdled_! She's an old, old woman--for a Madonna!"

It was as if I had brutally struck him; I shall never forget the long, slow, almost ghastly look of pain, with which he answered me. 

"Dawdled?--old, old?" he stammered. "Are you joking?"

"Why, my dear fellow, I suppose you don't take her for a woman oftwenty?"

He drew a long breath and leaned against a house, looking at me withquestioning, protesting, reproachful eyes. At last, starting forward, and grasping my arm--"Answer me solemnly: does she seem to you truly old?Is she wrinkled, is she faded, am I blind?"

Then at last I understood the immensity of his illusion how, one by one, the noiseless years had ebbed away and left him brooding in charmedinaction, for ever preparing for a work for ever deferred. It seemed tome almost a kindness now to tell him the plain truth. "I should be sorryto say you are blind, " I answered, "but I think you are deceived. Youhave lost time in effortless contemplation. Your friend was once youngand fresh and virginal; but, I protest, that was some years ago. Still, she has _de beaux restes_. By all means make her sit for you!" I brokedown; his face was too horribly reproachful. 

He took off his hat and stood passing his handkerchief mechanically overhis forehead. "_De beaux restes_? I thank you for sparing me the plainEnglish. I must make up my Madonna out of _de beaux restes_! What amasterpiece she will be! Old--old! Old--old!" he murmured. 

"Never mind her age, " I cried, revolted at what I had done, "never mindmy impression of her! You have your memory, your notes, your genius. Finish your picture in a month. I pronounce it beforehand a masterpiece, and I hereby offer you for it any sum you may choose to ask. "

He stared, but he seemed scarcely to understand me. "Old--old!" he keptstupidly repeating. "If she is old, what am I? If her beauty has faded, where--where is my strength? Has life been a dream? Have I worshippedtoo long--have I loved too well?" The charm, in truth, was broken. Thatthe chord of illusion should have snapped at my light accidental touchshowed how it had been weakened by excessive tension. The poor fellow'ssense of wasted time, of vanished opportunity, seemed to roll in upon hissoul in waves of darkness. He suddenly dropped his head and burst intotears. 

I led him homeward with all possible tenderness, but I attempted neitherto check his grief, to restore his equanimity, nor to unsay the hardtruth. When we reached my hotel I tried to induce him to come so. 

"We will drink a glass of wine, " I said, smiling, "to the completion ofthe Madonna. "

With a violent effort he held up his head, mused for a moment with aformidably sombre frown, and then giving me his hand, "I will finish it, "he cried, "in a month! No, in a fortnight! After all, I have it_here_!" And he tapped his forehead. "Of course she's old! She canafford to have it said of her--a woman who has made twenty years passlike a twelvemonth! Old--old! Why, sir, she shall be eternal!"

I wished to see him safely to his own door, but he waved me back andwalked away with an air of resolution, whistling and swinging his cane. Iwaited a moment, and then followed him at a distance, and saw him proceedto cross the Santa Trinita Bridge. When he reached the middle hesuddenly paused, as if his strength had deserted him, and leaned upon theparapet gazing over into the river. I was careful to keep him in sight;I confess that I passed ten very nervous minutes. He recovered himselfat last, and went his way, slowly and with hanging head. 

That I had really startled poor Theobald into a bolder use of his long-garnered stores of knowledge and taste, into the vulgar effort and hazardof production, seemed at first reason enough for his continued silenceand absence; but as day followed day without his either calling orsending me a line, and without my meeting him in his customary haunts, inthe galleries, in the Chapel at San Lorenzo, or strolling between theArno side and the great hedge-screen of verdure which, along the drive ofthe Cascine, throws the fair occupants of barouche and phaeton into suchbecoming relief--as for more than a week I got neither tidings nor sightof him, I began to fear that I had fatally offended him, and that, instead of giving a wholesome impetus to his talent, I had brutallyparalysed it. I had a wretched suspicion that I had made him ill. Mystay at Florence was drawing to a close, and it was important that, before resuming my journey, I should assure myself of the truth. Theobald, to the last, had kept his lodging a mystery, and I wasaltogether at a loss where to look for him. The simplest course was tomake inquiry of the beauty of the Mercato Vecchio, and I confess thatunsatisfied curiosity as to the lady herself counselled it as well. Perhaps I had done her injustice, and she was as immortally fresh andfair as be conceived her. I was, at any rate, anxious to behold oncemore the ripe enchantress who had made twenty years pass as atwelvemonth. I repaired accordingly, one morning, to her abode, climbedthe interminable staircase, and reached her door. It stood ajar, and asI hesitated whether to enter, a little serving-maid came clattering outwith an empty kettle, as if she had just performed some savoury errand. The inner door, too, was open; so I crossed the little vestibule andentered the room in which I had formerly been received. It had not itsevening aspect. The table, or one end of it, was spread for a latebreakfast, and before it sat a gentleman--an individual, at least, of themale sex--doing execution upon a beefsteak and onions, and a bottle ofwine. At his elbow, in friendly proximity, was placed the lady of thehouse. Her attitude, as I entered, was not that of an enchantress. Withone hand she held in her lap a plate of smoking maccaroni; with the othershe had lifted high in air one of the pendulous filaments of thissucculent compound, and was in the act of slipping it gently down herthroat. On the uncovered end of the table, facing her companion, wereranged half a dozen small statuettes, of some snuff-coloured substanceresembling terra-cotta. He, brandishing his knife with ardour, wasapparently descanting on their merits. 

Evidently I darkened the door. My hostess dropped liner maccaroni--intoher mouth, and rose hastily with a harsh exclamation and a flushed face. I immediately perceived that the Signora Serafina's secret was evenbetter worth knowing than I had supposed, and that the way to learn itwas to take it for granted. I summoned my best Italian, I smiled andbowed and apologised for my intrusion; and in a moment, whether or no Ihad dispelled the lady's irritation, I had at least stimulated herprudence. I was welcome, she said; I must take a seat. This was anotherfriend of hers--also an artist, she declared with a smile which wasalmost amiable. Her companion wiped his moustache and bowed with greatcivility. I saw at a glance that he was equal to the situation. He waspresumably the author of the statuettes on the table, and he knew a money-spending _forestiere_ when he saw one. He was a small wiry man, with aclever, impudent, tossed-up nose, a sharp little black eye, and waxedends to his moustache. On the side of his head he wore jauntily a littlecrimson velvet smoking-cap, and I observed that his feet were encased inbrilliant slippers. On Serafina's remarking with dignity that I was thefriend of Mr. Theobald, he broke out into that fantastic French of whichcertain Italians are so insistently lavish, and declared with fervourthat Mr. Theobald was a magnificent genius. 

"I am sure I don't know, " I answered with a shrug. "If you are in aposition to affirm it, you have the advantage of me. I have seen nothingfrom his hand but the bambino yonder, which certainly is fine. "

He declared that the bambino was a masterpiece, a pure Corregio. It wasonly a pity, he added with a knowing laugh, that the sketch had not beenmade on some good bit of honeycombed old panel. The stately Serafinahereupon protested that Mr. Theobald was the soul of honour, and that hewould never lend himself to a deceit. "I am not a judge of genius, " shesaid, "and I know nothing of pictures. I am but a poor simple widow; butI know that the Signor Teobaldo has the heart of an angel and the virtueof a saint. He is my benefactor, " she added sententiously. The after-glow of the somewhat sinister flush with which she had greeted me stilllingered in her cheek, and perhaps did not favour her beauty; I could notbut fancy it a wise custom of Theobald's to visit her only bycandle-light. She was coarse, and her pour adorer was a poet. 

"I have the greatest esteem for him, " I said; "it is for this reason thatI have been uneasy at not seeing him for ten days. Have you seen him? Ishe perhaps ill?"

"Ill! Heaven forbid!" cried Serafina, with genuine vehemence. 

Her companion uttered a rapid expletive, and reproached her with nothaving been to see him. She hesitated a moment; then she simpered theleast bit and bridled. "He comes to see me--without reproach! But itwould not be the same for me to go to him, though, indeed, you may almostcall him a man of holy life. "

"He has the greatest admiration for you, " I said. "He would have beenhonoured by your visit. "

She looked at me a moment sharply. "More admiration than you. Admitthat!" Of course I protested with all the eloquence at my command, andmy mysterious hostess then confessed that she had taken no fancy to me onmy former visit, and that, Theobald not having returned, she believed Ihad poisoned his mind against her. "It would be no kindness to the poorgentleman, I can tell you that, " she said. "He has come to see me everyevening for years. It's a long friendship! No one knows him as well asI. "

"I don't pretend to know him or to understand him, " I said. "He's amystery! Nevertheless, he seems to me a little--" And I touched myforehead and waved my hand in the air. 

Serafina glanced at her companion a moment, as if for inspiration. Hecontented himself with shrugging his shoulders as he filled his glassagain. The _padrona_ hereupon gave me a more softly insinuating smilethan would have seemed likely to bloom on so candid a brow. "It's forthat that I love him!" she said. "The world has so little kindness forsuch persons. It laughs at them, and despises them, and cheats them. Heis too good for this wicked life! It's his fancy that he finds a littleParadise up here in my poor apartment. If he thinks so, how can I helpit? He has a strange belief--really, I ought to be ashamed to tellyou--that I resemble the Blessed Virgin: Heaven forgive me! I let himthink what he pleases, so long as it makes him happy. He was very kindto me once, and I am not one that forgets a favour. So I receive himevery evening civilly, and ask after his health, and let him look at meon this side and that! For that matter, I may say it without vanity, Iwas worth looking at once! And he's not always amusing, poor man! Hesits sometimes for an hour without speaking a word, or else he talksaway, without stopping, on art and nature, and beauty and duty, and fiftyfine things that are all so much Latin to me. I beg you to understandthat he has never said a word to me that I mightn't decently listen to. He may be a little cracked, but he's one of the blessed saints. "

"Eh!" cried the man, "the blessed saints were all a little cracked!"

Serafina, I fancied, left part of her story untold; but she told enoughof it to make poor Theobald's own statement seem intensely pathetic inits exalted simplicity. "It's a strange fortune, certainly, " she wenton, "to have such a friend as this dear man--a friend who is less than alover and more than a friend. " I glanced at her companion, who preservedan impenetrable smile, twisted the end of his moustache, and disposed ofa copious mouthful. Was _he_ less than a lover? "But what will youhave?" Serafina pursued. "In this hard world one must not ask too manyquestions; one must take what comes and keep what one gets. I have keptmy good friend for twenty years, and I do hope that, at this time of day, signore, you have not come to turn him against me!"

I assured her that I had no such design, and that I should vastly regretdisturbing Mr. Theobald's habits or convictions. On the contrary, I wasalarmed about him, and I should immediately go in search of him. Shegave me his address, and a florid account of her sufferings at his non-appearance. She had not been to him for various reasons; chiefly becauseshe was afraid of displeasing him, as he had always made such a mysteryof his home. "You might have sent this gentleman!" I ventured tosuggest. 

"Ah, " cried the gentleman, "he admires the Signora Serafina, but hewouldn't admire me. " And then, confidentially, with his finger on hisnose, "He's a purist!"

I was about to withdraw, after having promised that I would inform theSignora Serafina of my friend's condition, when her companion, who hadrisen from table and girded his loins apparently for the onset, graspedme gently by the arm, and led me before the row of statuettes. "Iperceive by your conversation, signore, that you are a patron of thearts. Allow me to request your honourable attention for these modestproducts of my own ingenuity. They are brand-new, fresh from my atelier, and have never been exhibited in public. I have brought them here toreceive the verdict of this dear lady, who is a good critic, for all shemay pretend to the contrary. I am the inventor of this peculiar style ofstatuette--of subject, manner, material, everything. Touch them, I prayyou; handle them freely--you needn't fear. Delicate as they look, it isimpossible they should break! My various creations have met with greatsuccess. They are especially admired by Americans. I have sent them allover Europe--to London, Paris, Vienna! You may have observed some littlespecimens in Paris, on the Boulevard, in a shop of which they constitutethe specialty. There is always a crowd about the window. They form avery pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf of a gay young bachelor, forthe boudoir of a pretty woman. You couldn't make a prettier present to aperson with whom you wished to exchange a harmless joke. It is notclassic art, signore, of course; but, between ourselves, isn't classicart sometimes rather a bore? Caricature, burlesque, _la charge_, as theFrench say, has hitherto been confined to paper, to the pen and pencil. Now, it has been my inspiration to introduce it into statuary. For thispurpose I have invented a peculiar plastic compound which you will permitme not to divulge. That's my secret, signore! It's as light, youperceive, as cork, and yet as firm as alabaster! I frankly confess thatI really pride myself as much on this little stroke of chemical ingenuityas upon the other element of novelty in my creations--my types. What doyou say to my types, signore? The idea is bold; does it strike you ashappy? Cats and monkeys--monkeys and cats--all human life is there!Human life, of course, I mean, viewed with the eye of the satirist! Tocombine sculpture and satire, signore, has been my unprecedentedambition. I flatter myself that I have not egregiously failed. "

As this jaunty Juvenal of the chimney-piece delivered himself of hispersuasive allocution, he took up his little groups successively from thetable, held them aloft, turned them about, rapped them with his knuckles, and gazed at them lovingly, with his head on one side. They consistedeach of a cat and a monkey, fantastically draped, in some preposterouslysentimental conjunction. They exhibited a certain sameness of motive, and illustrated chiefly the different phases of what, in delicate terms, may be called gallantry and coquetry; but they were strikingly clever andexpressive, and were at once very perfect cats and monkeys and verynatural men and women. I confess, however, that they failed to amuse me. I was doubtless not in a mood to enjoy them, for they seemed to mepeculiarly cynical and vulgar. Their imitative felicity was revolting. As I looked askance at the complacent little artist, brandishing thembetween finger and thumb and caressing them with an amorous eye, heseemed to me himself little more than an exceptionally intelligent ape. Imustered an admiring grin, however, and he blew another blast. "Myfigures are studied from life! I have a little menagerie of monkeyswhose frolics I contemplate by the hour. As for the cats, one has onlyto look out of one's back window! Since I have begun to examine theseexpressive little brutes, I have made many profound observations. Speaking, signore, to a man of imagination, I may say that my littledesigns are not without a philosophy of their own. Truly, I don't knowwhether the cats and monkeys imitate us, or whether it's we who imitatethem. " I congratulated him on his philosophy, and he resumed: "You willdo use the honour to admit that I have handled my subjects with delicacy. Eh, it was needed, signore! I have been free, but not too free--eh? Justa hint, you know! You may see as much or as little as you please. Theselittle groups, however, are no measure of my invention. If you willfavour me with a call at my studio, I think that you will admit that mycombinations are really infinite. I likewise execute figures to command. You have perhaps some little motive--the fruit of your philosophy oflife, signore--which you would like to have interpreted. I can promiseto work it up to your satisfaction; it shall be as malicious as youplease! Allow me to present you with my card, and to remind you that myprices are moderate. Only sixty francs for a little group like that. Mystatuettes are as durable as bronze--_aere perennius_, signore--and, between ourselves, I think they are more amusing!"

As I pocketed his card I glanced at Madonna Serafina, wondering whethershe had an eye for contrasts. She had picked up one of the littlecouples and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom. 

What I had just seen and heard had so deepened my compassionate interestin my deluded friend that I took a summary leave, making my way directlyto the house designated by this remarkable woman. It was in an obscurecorner of the opposite side of the town, and presented a sombre andsqualid appearance. An old woman in the doorway, on my inquiring forTheobald, ushered me in with a mumbled blessing and an expression ofrelief at the poor gentleman having a friend. His lodging seemed toconsist of a single room at the top of the house. On getting no answerto my knock, I opened the door, supposing that he was absent, so that itgave me a certain shock to find him sitting there helpless and dumb. Hewas seated near the single window, facing an easel which supported alarge canvas. On my entering he looked up at me blankly, withoutchanging his position, which was that of absolute lassitude anddejection, his arms loosely folded, his legs stretched before him, hishead hanging on his breast. Advancing into the room I perceived that hisface vividly corresponded with his attitude. He was pale, haggard, andunshaven, and his dull and sunken eye gazed at me without a spark ofrecognition. I had been afraid that he would greet me with fiercereproaches, as the cruelly officious patron who had turned hiscontentment to bitterness, and I was relieved to find that my appearanceawakened no visible resentment. "Don't you know me?" I asked, as I putout my hand. "Have you already forgotten me?"

He made no response, kept his position stupidly, and left me staringabout the room. It spoke most plaintively for itself. Shabby, sordid, naked, it contained, beyond the wretched bed, but the scantiest provisionfor personal comfort. It was bedroom at once and studio--a grim ghost ofa studio. A few dusty casts and prints on the walls, three or four oldcanvases turned face inward, and a rusty-looking colour-box, formed, withthe easel at the window, the sum of its appurtenances. The placesavoured horribly of poverty. Its only wealth was the picture on theeasel, presumably the famous Madonna. Averted as this was from the door, I was unable to see its face; but at last, sickened by the vacant miseryof the spot, I passed behind Theobald, eagerly and tenderly. I canhardly say that I was surprised at what I found--a canvas that was a meredead blank, cracked and discoloured by time. This was his immortal work!Though not surprised, I confess I was powerfully moved, and I think thatfor five minutes I could not have trusted myself to speak. At last mysilent nearness affected him; he stirred and turned, and then rose andlooked at me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some kindineffective nothings about his being ill and needing advice and care, buthe seemed absorbed in the effort to recall distinctly what had lastpassed between us. "You were right, " he said, with a pitiful smile, "Iam a dawdler! I am a failure! I shall do nothing more in this world. You opened my eyes; and, though the truth is bitter, I bear you nogrudge. Amen! I have been sitting here for a week, face to face withthe truth, with the past, with my weakness and poverty and nullity. Ishall never touch a brush! I believe I have neither eaten nor slept. Look at that canvas!" he went on, as I relieved my emotion in an urgentrequest that he would come home with me and dine. "That was to havecontained my masterpiece! Isn't it a promising foundation? The elementsof it are all _here_. " And he tapped his forehead with that mysticconfidence which had marked the gesture before. "If I could onlytranspose them into some brain that has the hand, the will! Since I havebeen sitting here taking stock of my intellects, I have come to believethat I have the material for a hundred masterpieces. But my hand isparalysed now, and they will never be painted. I never began! I waitedand waited to be worthier to begin, and wasted my life in preparation. While I fancied my creation was growing it was dying. I have taken itall too hard! Michael Angelo didn't, when he went at the Lorenzo! Hedid his best at a venture, and his venture is immortal. _That's_ mine!"And he pointed with a gesture I shall never forget at the empty canvas. "I suppose we are a genus by ourselves in the providential scheme--wetalents that can't act, that can't do nor dare! We take it out in talk, in plans and promises, in study, in visions! But our visions, let metell you, " he cried, with a toss of his head, "have a way of beingbrilliant, and a man has not lived in vain who has seen the things I haveseen! Of course you will not believe in them when that bit of worm-eatencloth is all I have to show for them; but to convince you, to enchant andastound the world, I need only the hand of Raphael. His brain I alreadyhave. A pity, you will say, that I haven't his modesty! Ah, let meboast and babble now; it's all I have left! I am the half of a genius!Where in the wide world is my other half? Lodged perhaps in the vulgarsoul, the cunning, ready fingers of some dull copyist or some trivialartisan, who turns out by the dozen his easy prodigies of touch! Butit's not for me to sneer at him; he at least does something. He's not adawdler! Well for me if I had been vulgar and clever and reckless, if Icould have shut my eyes and taken my leap. "

What to say to the poor fellow, what to do for him, seemed hard todetermine; I chiefly felt that I must break the spell of his presentinaction, and remove him from the haunted atmosphere of the little roomit was such a cruel irony to call a studio. I cannot say I persuaded himto come out with me; he simply suffered himself to be led, and when webegan to walk in the open air I was able to appreciate his pitifullyweakened condition. Nevertheless, he seemed in a certain way to revive, and murmured at last that he should like to go to the Pitti Gallery. Ishall never forget our melancholy stroll through those gorgeous halls, every picture on whose walls seemed, even to my own sympathetic vision, to glow with a sort of insolent renewal of strength and lustre. The eyesand lips of the great portraits appeared to smile in ineffable scorn ofthe dejected pretender who had dreamed of competing with their triumphantauthors; the celestial candour, even, of the Madonna of the Chair, as wepaused in perfect silence before her, was tinged with the sinister ironyof the women of Leonardo. Perfect silence, indeed, marked our wholeprogress--the silence of a deep farewell; for I felt in all my pulses, asTheobald, leaning on my arm, dragged one heavy foot after the other, thathe was looking his last. When we came out he was so exhausted thatinstead of taking him to my hotel to dine, I called a carriage and drovehim straight to his own poor lodging. He had sunk into an extraordinarylethargy; he lay back in the carriage, with his eyes closed, as pale asdeath, his faint breathing interrupted at intervals by a sudden gasp, like a smothered sob or a vain attempt to speak. With the help of theold woman who had admitted me before, and who emerged from a dark backcourt, I contrived to lead him up the long steep staircase and lay him onhis wretched bed. To her I gave him in charge, while I prepared in allhaste to seek a physician. But she followed me out of the room with apitiful clasping of her hands. 

"Poor, dear, blessed gentleman, " she murmured; "is he dying?"

"Possibly. How long has he been thus?"

"Since a certain night he passed ten days ago. I came up in the morningto make his poor bed, and found him sitting up in his clothes before thatgreat canvas he keeps there. Poor, dear, strange man, he says hisprayers to it! He had not been to bed, nor since then, properly! Whathas happened to him? Has he found out about the Serafina?" shewhispered, with a glittering eye and a toothless grin. 

"Prove at least that one old woman can be faithful, " I said, "and watchhim well till I come back. " My return was delayed, through the absenceof the English physician, who was away on a round of visits, and whom Ivainly pursued from house to house before I overtook him. I brought himto Theobald's bedside none too soon. A violent fever had seized ourpatient, and the case was evidently grave. A couple of hours later Iknew that he had brain fever. From this moment I was with himconstantly; but I am far from wishing to describe his illness. Excessively painful to witness, it was happily brief. Life burned out indelirium. One night in particular that I passed at his pillow, listeningto his wild snatches of regret, of aspiration, of rapture and awe at thephantasmal pictures with which his brain seemed to swarm, comes back tomy memory now like some stray page from a lost masterpiece of tragedy. Before a week was over we had buried him in the little Protestantcemetery on the way to Fiesole. The Signora Serafina, whom I had causedto be informed of his illness, had come in person, I was told, to inquireabout its progress; but she was absent from his funeral, which wasattended by but a scanty concourse of mourners. Half a dozen oldFlorentine sojourners, in spite of the prolonged estrangement which hadpreceded his death, had felt the kindly impulse to honour his grave. Among them was my friend Mrs. Coventry, whom I found, on my departure, waiting in her carriage at the gate of the cemetery. 

"Well, " she said, relieving at last with a significant smile thesolemnity of our immediate greeting, "and the great Madonna? Have youseen her, after all?"

"I have seen her, " I said; "she is mine--by bequest. But I shall nevershow her to you. "

"And why not, pray?"

"My dear Mrs. Coventry, you would not understand her!"

"Upon my word, you are polite. "

"Excuse me; I am sad and vexed and bitter. " And with reprehensiblerudeness I marched away. I was excessively impatient to leave Florence;my friend's dark spirit seemed diffused through all things. I had packedmy trunk to start for Rome that night, and meanwhile, to beguile myunrest, I aimlessly paced the streets. Chance led me at last to thechurch of San Lorenzo. Remembering poor Theobald's phrase about MichaelAngelo--"He did his best at a venture"--I went in and turned my steps tothe chapel of the tombs. Viewing in sadness the sadness of its immortaltreasures, I fancied, while I stood there, that they needed no amplercommentary than these simple words. As I passed through the church againto leave it, a woman, turning away from one of the side altars, met meface to face. The black shawl depending from her head drapedpicturesquely the handsome visage of Madonna Serafina. She stopped asshe recognised me, and I saw that she wished to speak. Her eye wasbright, and her ample bosom heaved in a way that seemed to portend acertain sharpness of reproach. But the expression of my own face, apparently, drew the sting from her resentment, and she addressed me in atone in which bitterness was tempered by a sort of dogged resignation. "Iknow it was you, now, that separated us, " she said. "It was a pity heever brought you to see me! Of course, you couldn't think of me as hedid. Well, the Lord gave him, the Lord has taken him. I have just paidfor a nine days' mass for his soul. And I can tell you this, signore--Inever deceived him. Who put it into his head that I was made to live onholy thoughts and fine phrases? It was his own fancy, and it pleased himto think so. --Did he suffer much?" she added more softly, after a pause. 

"His sufferings were great, but they were short. "

"And did he speak of me?" She had hesitated and dropped her eyes; sheraised them with her question, and revealed in their sombre stillness agleam of feminine confidence which, for the moment, revived and illuminedher beauty. Poor Theobald! Whatever name he had given his passion, itwas still her fine eyes that had charmed him. 

"Be contented, madam, " I answered, gravely. 

She dropped her eyes again and was silent. Then exhaling a full richsigh, as she gathered her shawl together--"He was a magnificent genius!"

I bowed, and we separated. 

Passing through a narrow side street on my way back to my hotel, Iperceived above a doorway a sign which it seemed to me I had read before. I suddenly remembered that it was identical with the superscription of acard that I had carried for an hour in my waistcoat pocket. On thethreshold stood the ingenious artist whose claims to public favour werethus distinctly signalised, smoking a pipe in the evening air, and givingthe finishing polish with a bit of rag to one of his inimitable"combinations. " I caught the expressive curl of a couple of tails. Herecognised me, removed his little red cap with a most obsequious bow, andmotioned me to enter his studio. I returned his salute and passed on, vexed with the apparition. For a week afterwards, whenever I was seizedamong the ruins of triumphant Rome with some peculiarly poignant memoryof Theobald's transcendent illusions and deplorable failure, I seemed tohear a fantastic, impertinent murmur, "Cats and monkeys, monkeys andcats; all human life there!"