debased as to lend his wife to dishonor?  When you paint a picture for the court you do not put your whole soul into it; you sell to courtiers your tricked-out lay-figures.  My painting is not a picture; it is a sentiment, a passion!  Born in my atelier, she must remain a virgin there.  She shall not leave it unclothed.  Poesy and women give themselves bare, like truth, to lovers only.  Have we the model of Raphael, the Angelica of Ariosto, the Beatrice of Dante?  No, we see but their semblance.  Well, the work which I keep hidden behind bolts and bars is an exception to all other art.  It is not a canvas; it is a woman,—­a woman with whom I weep and laugh and think and talk.  Would you have me resign the joy of ten years, as I might throw away a worn-out doublet?  Shall I, in a moment, cease to be father, lover, creator?—­this woman is not a creature; she is my creation.  Bring your young man; I will give him my treasures,—­paintings of Correggio, Michael-Angelo, Titian; I will kiss the print of his feet in the dust, —­but make him my rival?  Shame upon me!  Ha!  I am more a lover than I am a painter.  I shall have the strength to burn my Nut-girl ere I render my last sigh; but suffer her to endure the glance of a man, a young man, a painter?—­No, no!  I would kill on the morrow the man who polluted her with a look!  I would kill you,—­you, my friend,—­if you did not worship her on your knees; and think you I would submit my idol to the cold eyes and stupid criticisms of fools?  Ah, love is a mystery! its life is in the depths of the soul; it dies when a man says, even to his friend, Here is she whom I love.”

The old man seemed to renew his youth; his eyes had the brilliancy and fire of life, his pale cheeks blushed a vivid red, his hands trembled.  Porbus, amazed by the passionate violence with which he uttered these words, knew not how to answer a feeling so novel and yet so profound.  Was the old man under the thraldom of an artist’s fancy?  Or did these ideas flow from the unspeakable fanaticism produced at times in every mind by the long gestation of a noble work?  Was it possible to bargain with this strange and whimsical being?

Filled with such thoughts, Porbus said to the old man, “Is it not woman for woman?  Poussin lends his mistress to your eyes.”

“What sort of mistress is that?” cried Frenhofer.  “She will betray him sooner or later.  Mine will be to me forever faithful.”

“Well,” returned Porbus, “then let us say no more.  But before you find, even in Asia, a woman as beautiful, as perfect, as the one I speak of, you may be dead, and your picture forever unfinished.”

“Oh, it is finished!” said Frenhofer.  “Whoever sees it will find a woman lying on a velvet bed, beneath curtains; perfumes are exhaling from a golden tripod by her side:  he will be tempted to take the tassels of the cord that holds back the curtain; he will think he sees the bosom of Catherine Lescaut,—­a model called the Beautiful Nut-girl; he will see it rise and fall with the movement of her breathing.  Yet—­I wish I could be sure—­”