Porbus and Poussin stood motionless on either side of the easel,
plunged in passionate contemplation.
"See, young man," said the old man without turning round, "see how
with three or four touches and a faint bluish glaze you can make the
air circulate round the head of the poor saint, who was suffocating in
that thick atmosphere. Look how the drapery now floats, and you see
that the breeze lifts it; just now it looked like heavy linen held out
by pins. Observe that the satiny lustre I am putting on the bosom
gives it the plump suppleness of the flesh of a young girl. See how
this tone of mingled reddish-brown and ochre warms up the cold
grayness of that large shadow where the blood seemed to stagnate
rather than flow. Young man, young man! what I am showing you now no
other master in the world can teach you. Mabuse alone knew the secret
of giving life to form. Mabuse had but one pupil, and I am he. I never
took a pupil, and I am an old man now. You are intelligent enough to
guess at what should follow from the little that I shall show you
to-day."
While he was speaking, the extraordinary old man was giving touches
here and there to all parts of the picture. Here two strokes of the
brush, there one, but each so telling that together they brought out a
new painting,--a painting steeped, as it were, in light. He worked
with such passionate ardor that the sweat rolled in great drops from
his bald brow; and his motions seemed to be jerked out of him with
such rapidity and impatience that the young Poussin fancied a demon,
encased with the body of this singular being, was working his hands
fantastically like those of a puppet without, or even against, the
will of their owner.
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