In the Days of My Youth Part 76

"A copy of the celebrated 'Pensiero' of Michel Angelo--in other words, the famous sitting statue of Lorenzo de Medici, in the Medicean chapel in Florence. I had it executed for me on the spot by Bazzanti."

"A n.o.ble figure!"

"Indeed it is--a n.o.ble figure, instinct with life, and strength, and meditation. My first thought on seeing the original was that I would not for worlds be condemned to pa.s.s a night alone with it. I should every moment expect the musing hand to drop away from the stern mouth, and the eyes to turn upon me!"

"These," said I, pausing at the chimney-piece, "are _souvenirs_ of Switzerland. How delicately those chamois are carved out of the hard wood! They almost seem to snuff the mountain air! But here is a rapier with a hilt of ornamented steel--where did this come from?"

I had purposely led up the conversation to this point. I had patiently questioned and examined for the sake of this one inquiry, and I waited her reply as if my life hung on it.

Her whole countenance changed. She took it down, and her eyes filled with tears.

"It was my father's," she said, tenderly.

"Your father's!" I exclaimed, joyfully. "Heaven be thanked! Did you say your father's?"

She looked up surprised, then smiled, and faintly blushed.

"I did," she replied.

"And was your father a soldier?" I asked; for the sword looked more like a sword of ceremony than a sword for service.

But to this question she gave no direct reply.

"It was his sword," she said, "and he had the best of all rights to wear it."

With this she kissed the weapon reverently, and restored it to its place.

I kissed her hand quite as reverently that day at parting, and she did not withdraw it.

CHAPTER XLVII.

ALL ABOUT ART.

Art's a service.

AURORA LEIGH.

"G.o.d sent art, and the devil sent critics," said Muller, dismally paraphrasing a popular proverb. "My picture is rejected!"

"Rejected!" I echoed, surprised to find him sitting on the floor, like a tailor, in front of an acre of canvas. "By whom?"

"By the Hanging Committee."

"Hang the Hanging Committee!"

"A pious prayer, my friend. Would that it could be carried into execution!"

"What cause do they a.s.sign?"

"Cause! Do you suppose they trouble themselves to find one? Not a bit of it. They simply scrawl a great R in chalk on the back of it, and send you a printed notice to carry it home again. What is it to them, if a poor devil has been painting his very heart and hopes out, day after day, for a whole year, upon that piece of canvas? Nothing, and less than nothing--confound them!"

I drew a chair before the picture, and set myself to a patient study of the details. He had chosen a difficult subject--the death of Louis XI.

The scene represented a s.p.a.cious chamber in the Castle of Plessisles-Tours. To the left, in a great oak chair beside the bed from which he had just risen, sat the dying king, with a rich, furred mantle loosely thrown around him. At his feet, his face buried in his hands, kneeled the Dauphin. Behind his chair, holding up the crucifix to enjoin silence, stood the king's confessor. A physician, a couple of councillors in scarlet robes, and a captain of archers, stood somewhat back, whispering together and watching the countenance of the dying man; while through the outer door was seen a crowd of courtiers and pages, waiting to congratulate King Charles VIII. It was an ambitious subject, and Muller had conceived it in a grand spirit. The heads were expressive; and the textures of the velvets, tapestries, oak carvings, and so forth, had been executed with more than ordinary finish and fidelity. For all this, however, there was more of promise than of achievement in the work. The lights were scattered; the att.i.tudes were stiff; there was too evident an attempt at effect. One could see that it was the work of a young painter, who had yet much to learn, and something of the Academy to forget.

"Well," said Muller, still sitting ruefully on the floor, "what do you think of it? Am I rightly served? Shall I send for a big pail of whitewash, and blot it all out?"

"Not for the world!"

"What shall I do, then?"

"Do better."

"But, if I have done my best already?"

"Still do better; and when you have done that, do better again. So genius toils higher and ever higher, and like the climber of the glacier, plants his foot where only his hand clung the moment before."

"Humph! but what of my picture?"

"Well," I said, hesitatingly, "I am no critic--"

"Thank Heaven!" muttered Muller, parenthetically.

"But there is something n.o.ble in the disposition of the figures. I should say, however, that you had set to work upon too large a scale."

"A question of focus," said the painter, hastily. "A mere question of focus."

"How can that be, when you have finished some parts laboriously, and in others seem scarcely to have troubled yourself to cover the canvas?"

"I don't know. I'm impatient, you see, and--and I think I got tired of it towards the last."

"Would that have been the case if you had allowed yourself but half the s.p.a.ce?"

"I'll take to enamel," exclaimed Muller, with a grin of hyperbolical despair. "I'll immortalize myself in miniature. I'll paint henceforward with the aid of a microscope, and never again look at nature unless through the wrong end of a telescope!"

"Pshaw!--be in earnest, man, and talk sensibly! Do you conceive that for every failure you are to change your style? Give yourself, heart and soul, to the school in which you have begun, and make up your mind to succeed."

"Do you believe, then, that a man may succeed by force of will alone?"

said Muller, musingly.

"Yes, because force of will proceeds from force of character, and the two together, warp and woof, make the stuff out of which Nature clothes her heroes."

"Oh, but I am not talking of heroes," said Muller.

"By heroes, I do not mean only soldiers. Captain Pen is as good a hero as Captain Sword, any day; and Captain Brush, to my thinking, is as fine a fellow as either."

"Ay; but do they come, as you would seem to imply, of the same stock?"

said Muller. "Force of will and force of character are famous clays in which to mould a Wellington or a Columbus; but is not something more--at all events, something different--necessary to the modelling of a Raffaelle?"