The Disowned — Volume 03 eBook

shore of the myrtle and the vine, and entered the Imperial City.  The air of Rome seemed at first to operate favourably upon the health of the English artist.  His strength appeared to increase, his spirit to expand; and though he had relapsed into more than his original silence and reserve, he resumed, with apparent energy, the labours of the easel:  so that they who looked no deeper than the surface might have imagined the scar healed, and the real foundation of future excellence begun.

But while Warner most humbled himself before the gods of the pictured world; while the true principles of the mighty art opened in their fullest glory on his soul; precisely at this very moment shame and despondency were most bitter at his heart:  and while the enthusiasm of the painter kindled, the ambition of the man despaired.  But still he went on, transfusing into his canvas the grandeur and simplicity of the Italian school; still, though he felt palpably within him the creeping advance of the deadliest and surest enemy to fame, he pursued, with an unwearied ardour, the mechanical completion of his task; still, the morning found him bending before the easel, and the night brought to his solitary couch meditation rather than sleep.  The fire, the irritability which he had evinced before his illness had vanished, and the original sweetness of his temper had returned; he uttered no complaint, he dwelt upon no anticipation of success; hope and regret seemed equally dead within him; and it was only when he caught the fond, glad eyes of his aged attendant that his own filled with tears, or that the serenity of his brow darkened into sadness.

This went on for some months; till one evening they found the painter by his window, seated opposite to an unfinished picture.  The pencil was still in his hand; the quiet of settled thought was still upon his countenance; the soft breeze of a southern twilight waved the hair livingly from his forehead; the earliest star of a southern sky lent to his cheek something of that subdued lustre which, when touched by enthusiasm, it had been accustomed to wear; but these were only the mockeries of life:  life itself was no more!  He had died, reconciled, perhaps, to the loss of fame, in discovering that Art is to be loved for itself, and not for the rewards it may bestow upon the artist.

There are two tombs close to each other in the strangers’ burial-place at Rome:  they cover those for whom life, unequally long, terminated in the same month.  The one is of a woman, bowed with the burden of many years:  the other darkens over the dust of the young artist.

CHAPTER XXV.

           Think upon my grief,
    And on the justice of my flying hence,
    To keep me from a most unholy match.—­SHAKSPEARE.

“But are you quite sure,” said General St. Leger, “are you quite sure that this girl still permits Mordaunt’s addresses?”