As he uttered the last words, the monarch stopped before Sophonisba’s portrait, and pointing to it with the scornful chuckle peculiar to him, continued gaily: 

“There the answer meets me directly.  That red!  The Venetian’s laurels seem to have turned your high flown pupil’s head.  A hideous picture!”

“It doesn’t seem so bad to me,” replied Moor.  “There is even something about it I like.”

“You, you?” cried Philip.  “Poor Sophonisba!”

“Those carbuncle eyes!  And a mouth, that looks as if she could eat nothing but sugar-plums.  I don’t know what tickles me to-day.  Give me the palette.  The outlines are tolerably good, the colors fairly shriek.  But what boy can understand a woman, a woman like your friend!  I’ll paint over the monster, and if the picture isn’t Sophonisba, it may serve for a naval battle.”

The king had snatched the palette from the artist’s hand, clipped his brush in the paint, and smiling pleasantly, was about to set to work; but Moor placed himself between the sovereign and the canvas; exclaiming gaily:  “Paint me, Philip; but spare the portrait.”

“No, no; it will do for the naval battle,” chuckled the king, and while he pushed the artist back, the latter, carried away by the monarch’s unusual freedom, struck him lightly on the shoulder with the maul-stick.

The sovereign started, his lips grew white, he drew his small but stately figure to its full height.  His unconstrained bearing was instantly transformed into one of unapproachable, icy dignity.

Moor felt what was passing in the ruler’s mind.

A slight shiver ran through his frame, but his calmness remained unshaken, and before the insulted monarch found time to give vent to his indignation in words, he said quickly, as if the offence he had committed was not worth mentioning: 

“Queer things are done among comrades in art.  The painter’s war is over!  Begin the naval battle, Sire, or still better, lend more charm and delicacy to the corners of the mouth.  The pupil’s worst failure is in the chin; more practised hands might be wrecked on that cliff.  Those eyes!  Perhaps they sparkled just in that way, but we are agreed in one thing:  the portrait ought not to represent the original at a given moment, ruled by a certain feeling or engaged in a special act, but should express the sum of the spiritual, intellectual and personal attributes of the subject—­his soul and person, mind and character-feelings and nature.  King Philip, pondering over complicated political combinations, would be a fascinating historical painting, but no likeness. . . .”

“Certainly not,” said the king in a low voice; “the portrait must reveal the inmost spirit; mine must show how warmly Philip loves art and his artists.  Take the palette, I beg.  It is for you, the great Master, not for me, the overworked, bungling amateur, to correct the work of talented pupils.”

There was a hypocritical sweetness in the tone of these words which had not escaped the artist.