"'Invent, create, achieve!' Yes, that's our business; I know it well.
Don't take me, in Heaven's name, for one of your barren
complainers--impotent cynics who have neither talent nor faith! I am at
work!"--and he glanced about him and lowered his voice as if this were a
quite 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 would
be a fine thing if I were to cause some slender stream of beauty to flow
in 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 seem
possible! This is one of my nervous nights--I dream waking! When the
south wind blows over Florence at midnight it seems to coax the soul from
all the fair things locked away in her churches and galleries; it comes
into my own little studio with the moonlight, and sets my heart beating
too deeply for rest. You see I am always adding a thought to my
conception! This evening I felt that I couldn't sleep unless I had
communed 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 old
resident, and that he had taken the lovely city into his heart. "I owe
her everything," he declared. "It's only since I came here that I have
really lived, intellectually. One by one, all profane desires, all mere
worldly aims, have dropped away from me, and left me nothing but my
pencil, my little note-book" (and he tapped his breast-pocket), "and the
worship of the pure masters--those who were pure because they were
innocent, and those who were pure because they were strong!"

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