"In the early morning, even before the pilgrims who are encamped all about the chapel have awakened, a young man comes along the road, and, thinking no evil, enters the open portal, through which the gray light of morning has just begun to steal. He has often seen the wonder-working image that was worshiped here, but has never found that it exerted any particular power upon himself. And now he merely goes in and kneels down in a corner to let his heart commune with its God. But as his eyes roam absently about the chapel they encounter the divine apparition on the altar, sending a shock full of bliss and longing, adoration and rapture, to the very depths of his heart. Just at this moment the divine woman opens her eyes, makes a movement--which also wakes the boy--and has to think a little before she can remember where she is and how she came there. Her look falls upon the youth, who stands there gazing up at her, looking so handsome and earnest, and as if he were turned into a statue. She smiles graciously upon him, and moves her hand in token of greeting. Then a holy dread overcomes him, so that he flies from the chapel, and it is only when he is alone in the solitary wood that he recalls what he has seen, and realizes what a miracle has been revealed to him. And immediately the yearning comes back to him. Like a drunken man he staggers back to the chapel, where he finds the pilgrims already at their first mass. But the marvelously beautiful lady with the boy has vanished; the wooden Madonna is again enthroned under the baldachuin, and even a wax child lies upon her lap, for the priests have supplied the place of the broken one by another. Everything is in its old place, only the crown sits a little aslant on the brown, wooden head, for the sacristan has not succeeded in repairing the mysterious destruction any better. But the youth turns his steps homeward, and bears about with him, through his whole life, the after-glow of this wonderful apparition; striving always to represent, to his fellowmen who had not beheld it with their own eyes, how she had looked upon him--at first earnestly and dreamily, and then with a winning smile--and how the boy, with his wondering gaze, had illuminated everything about him, as if with balls of fire. And in his efforts to do this--for he was an artist--he has attained to greater and greater power and influence over his fellow-men, and each time has succeeded better in catching the face; and that is the secret which can be found in no history of art--the reason why this young Raphael has become the greatest of all painters, and his picture of the Madonna surpasses all others in beauty and in power." CHAPTER II. "By all the good spirits, but you are a poet!" cried Rossel, and he sprang up with so unusual an alacrity that his red fez slipped off his head.