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