The unknown copied the saint with an easy turn of his hand.
"Oh! oh!" exclaimed the old man, "what is your name?"
The youth signed the drawing: Nicolas Poussin.
"Not bad for a beginner," said the strange being who had discoursed so
wildly. "I see that it is worth while to talk art before you. I don't
blame you for admiring Porbus's saint. It is a masterpiece for the
world at large; only those who are behind the veil of the holy of
holies can perceive its errors. But you are worthy of a lesson, and
capable of understanding it. I will show you how little is needed to
turn that picture into a true masterpiece. Give all your eyes and all
your attention; such a chance of instruction may never fall in your
way again. Your palette, Porbus."
Porbus fetched his palette and brushes. The little old man turned up
his cuffs with convulsive haste, slipped his thumb through the palette
charged with prismatic colors, and snatched, rather than took, the
handful of brushes which Porbus held out to him. As he did so his
beard, cut to a point, seemed to quiver with the eagerness of an
incontinent fancy; and while he filled his brush he muttered between
his teeth:--
"Colors fit to fling out of the window with the man who ground them,
--crude, false, revolting! who can paint with them?"
Then he dipped the point of his brush with feverish haste into the
various tints, running through the whole scale with more rapidity than
the organist of a cathedral runs up the gamut of the "O Filii" at
Easter.
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