"I hear you," he observed, stooping to pick up a stray drawing,--"don't I think that if I like--" "Don't you think that if you like you may become as great a painter as Raffaelle or Michael Angelo?" I spoke seriously and waited for his reply, as if it were to decide the question. Cornelius looked at me with his drawing in his hand; he tried to laugh, but only reddened violently. "You ambitious little thing!" he said, "what has put Raffaelle or Michael Angelo into your head?" "Papa told me they were the two greatest painters, but I don't see why you should not be as great as either of them." "One can be great and yet be unlike them;--ay, and be famous too!" "Will you be famous?" "Who was it never bade me good morning?" asked Cornelius, kissing me. But in the very midst of the caress, as his lips touched my cheek, I repeated my question, with the unconquerable persistency of children: "Will you be famous?" "Would you like it?" he asked, smiling. "Oh! so much!" I exclaimed, with my whole heart. "Then, on my word, my dear, I shall do my best to please you; and now let us go down to breakfast." He was unusually late, but his sister did not complain. She received him with pleasant cheerfulness; yet several times, in the course of that day, I overheard her sighing to herself very sadly. I have since then wondered at the secretiveness of Cornelius; but though he was religious, he never spoke of religion; he rarely alluded to his country, for which he could do nothing, whose wrongs he resented too proudly to lament, and yet which he carried in his heart; and, perhaps because he loved it so ardently, he had never made painting the subject of daily speech. When it became the avowed occupation of his life--a task instead of a feeling--this reserve lessened; something of it remained with his sister; little, I might almost say nothing, with me. I was a child, but I gave him sympathy, a food which the strongest hearts have needed. I loved him, I admired him, I believed in him; he soon liked to have me in his study, or studio, as by a convenient change of the vowels it was now called. He could talk to me, amuse himself with my criticisms, then with a look consign me to silence. Perhaps it was thus he became so fond of me,--too fond, his sister said; all I know is, he was very kind and the winter a very happy time.