blame you for admiring Porbus's saint. It is a masterpiece for the
world at large; only those who are behind the veil of the holy of
holies can perceive its errors. But you are worthy of a lesson, and
capable of understanding it. I will show you how little is needed to
turn that picture into a true masterpiece. Give all your eyes and all
your attention; such a chance of instruction may never fall in your
way again. Your palette, Porbus."

Porbus fetched his palette and brushes. The little old man turned up
his cuffs with convulsive haste, slipped his thumb through the palette
charged with prismatic colors, and snatched, rather than took, the
handful of brushes which Porbus held out to him. As he did so his
beard, cut to a point, seemed to quiver with the eagerness of an
incontinent fancy; and while he filled his brush he muttered between
his teeth:--

"Colors fit to fling out of the window with the man who ground them,
--crude, false, revolting! who can paint with them?"

Then he dipped the point of his brush with feverish haste into the
various tints, running through the whole scale with more rapidity than
the organist of a cathedral runs up the gamut of the "O Filii" at
Easter.

Porbus and Poussin stood motionless on either side of the easel,
plunged in passionate contemplation.

"See, young man," said the old man without turning round, "see how
with three or four touches and a faint bluish glaze you can make the
air circulate round the head of the poor saint, who was suffocating in