“Let Velasquez paint Sebastian, the dwarf of Philippe IV. He endows him with such a touching gaze that we instantly read in it all the painful secret of this poor afflicted creature, forced, for his livelihood, to lower his human dignity, to become a plaything, a living bauble. And the more poignant the martyrdom of the conscience lodged in this grotesque body, the more beautiful is the artist’s work. “Let François Millet represent a peasant resting for a moment as he leans on the handle of his hoe, a wretched man worn by fatigue, baked by the sun, as stupid as a beast of burden dulled by blows—he has only to put into the expression of this poor devil a sublime resignation to the suffering ordained by Destiny, to make this creature of a nightmare become for us the great symbol of all Humanity. “Let Beaudelaire describe a festering corpse, unclean, viscid, eaten by worms, and let him but imagine his beloved mistress under this frightful aspect, and nothing can equal in splendor his picture of this terrible juxtaposition of beauty which we could wish eternal and the atrocious disintegration which awaits it. “Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure, A cette horrible infection. Etoile de mes yeux, Soleil de ma nature, O mon ange et ma passion! Oui, telle vous serez, o la reine des Grâces Après les derniers sacrements. Quand vous irez sous l’herbe et les floraisons grasses Pourrir parmi les ossements. Alors, o ma Beauté, dîtes à la vermine Qui vous mangerez de baisers, Que j’ai gardé la forme et l’essence divine De mes amours décomposés![3] Footnote 3: See page 250. [Illustration: THE MAN WITH THE HOE By Millet ] “It is the same when Shakespeare depicts Iago or Richard III., when Racine paints Nero and Narcissus; moral ugliness when interpreted by minds so clear and penetrating becomes a marvellous theme of beauty. “In fact, in art, only that which has _character_ is beautiful. “_Character_ is the essential truth of any natural object, whether ugly or beautiful; it is even what one might call a _double truth_, for it is the inner truth translated by the outer truth; it is the soul, the feelings, the ideas, expressed by the features of a face, by the gestures and actions of a human being, by the tones of a sky, by the lines of a horizon. “Now, to the great artist, everything in nature has character; for the unswerving directness of his observation searches out the hidden meaning of all things. And that which is considered ugly in nature often presents more _character_ than that which is termed beautiful, because in the contractions of a sickly countenance, in the lines of a vicious face, in all deformity, in all decay, the inner truth shines forth more clearly than in features that are regular and healthy.