fantastic coloring. You might have thought that a canvas of Rembrandt
without its frame had walked silently up the stairway, bringing with
it the dark atmosphere which was the sign-manual of the great master.
The old man cast a look upon the youth which was full of sagacity;
then he rapped three times upon the door, and said, when it was opened
by a man in feeble health, apparently about forty years of age,
"Good-morning, maitre."

Porbus bowed respectfully, and made way for his guest, allowing the
youth to pass in at the same time, under the impression that he came
with the old man, and taking no further notice of him; all the less
perhaps because the neophyte stood still beneath the spell which holds
a heaven-born painter as he sees for the first time an atelier filled
with the materials and instruments of his art. Daylight came from a
casement in the roof and fell, focussed as it were, upon a canvas
which rested on an easel in the middle of the room, and which bore, as
yet, only three or four chalk lines. The light thus concentrated did
not reach the dark angles of the vast atelier; but a few wandering
reflections gleamed through the russet shadows on the silvered
breastplate of a horseman's cuirass of the fourteenth century as it
hung from the wall, or sent sharp lines of light upon the carved and
polished cornice of a dresser which held specimens of rare pottery and
porcelains, or touched with sparkling points the rough-grained texture
of ancient gold-brocaded curtains, flung in broad folds about the room
to serve the painter as models for his drapery. Anatomical casts in
plaster, fragments and torsos of antique goddesses amorously polished
by the kisses of centuries, jostled each other upon shelves and
brackets. Innumerable sketches, studies in the three crayons, in ink,
and in red chalk covered the walls from floor to ceiling; color-boxes,
bottles of oil and turpentine, easels and stools upset or standing at