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 ground, and
labor for thyself, and be called Baas by thy neighbors," said the old man
Jehan many an hour from his bed. For to own a bit of soil, and to be
called Baas--master--by the hamlet round, is to have achieved the highest