Is not that the method of the sun, divine painter of the
universe? O Nature, Nature! who has ever caught thee in thy flights?
Alas! the heights of knowledge, like the depths of ignorance, lead to
unbelief. I doubt my work."
The old man paused, then resumed. "For ten years I have worked, young
man; but what are ten short years in the long struggle with Nature? We
do not know the type it cost Pygmalion to make the only statue that
ever walked--"
He fell into a reverie and remained, with fixed eyes, oblivious of all
about him, playing mechanically with his knife.
"See, he is talking to his own soul," said Porbus in a low voice.
The words acted like a spell on Nicolas Poussin, filling him with the
inexplicable curiosity of a true artist. The strange old man, with his
white eyes fixed in stupor, became to the wondering youth something
more than a man; he seemed a fantastic spirit inhabiting an unknown
sphere, and waking by its touch confused ideas within the soul. We can
no more define the moral phenomena of this species of fascination than
we can render in words the emotions excited in the heart of an exile
by a song which recalls his fatherland. The contempt which the old man
affected to pour upon the noblest efforts of art, his wealth, his
manners, the respectful deference shown to him by Porbus, his work
guarded so secretly,--a work of patient toil, a work no doubt of
genius, judging by the head of the Virgin which Poussin had so naively
admired, and which, beautiful beside even the Adam of Mabuse, betrayed
the imperial touch of a great artist,--in short, everything about the
strange old man seemed beyond the limits of human nature.
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