have been to scale the heights of the cathedral spire. They had never so
much as a sou to spare; if they cleared enough to get a little wood for
the stove, a little broth for the pot, it was the utmost they could do.
And yet the heart of the child was set in sore and endless longing upon
beholding the greatness of the two veiled Rubens.

The whole soul of the little Ardennois thrilled and stirred with an
absorbing passion for art. Going on his ways through the old city in
the early days before the sun or the people had risen, Nello, who looked
only a little peasant boy, with a great dog drawing milk to sell from
door to door, was in a heaven of dreams whereof Rubens was the god.
Nello, cold and hungry, with stockingless feet in wooden shoes, and the
winter winds blowing among his curls and lifting his poor thin garments,
was in a rapture of meditation, wherein all that he saw was the
beautiful fair face of the Mary of the Assumption, with the waves of her
golden hair lying upon her shoulders, and the light of an eternal sun
shining down upon her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and buffeted
by fortune, and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, had the
compensation or the curse which is called genius. No one knew it; he as
little as any. No one knew it. Only, indeed, Patrasche, who, being with
him always, saw him draw with chalk upon the stones any and every thing
that grew or breathed, heard him on his little bed of hay murmur all
manner of timid, pathetic prayers to the spirit of the great master;
watched his gaze darken and his face radiate at the evening glow of
sunset or the rosy rising of the dawn; and felt many and many a time the
tears of a strange, nameless pain and joy, mingled together, fall hotly
from the bright young eyes upon his own wrinkled yellow forehead.

"I should go to my grave quite content if I thought, Nello, that when
thou growest a man thou couldst own this hut and the little plot of