“You clothe your women in fair raiment of flesh, in gracious veiling of hair; but where is the blood, the source of passion and of calm, the cause of the particular effect? Why, this brown Egyptian of yours, my good Porbus, is a colorless creature! These figures that you set before us are painted bloodless fantoms; and you call that painting, you call that art! “Because you have made something more like a woman than a house, you think that you have set your fingers on the goal; you are quite proud that you need not to write _currus venustus_ or _pulcher homo_ beside your figures, as early painters were wont to do and you fancy that you have done wonders. Ah! my good friend, there is still something more to learn, and you will use up a great deal of chalk and cover many a canvas before you will learn it. Yes, truly, a woman carries her head in just such a way, so she holds her garments gathered into her hand; her eyes grow dreamy and soft with that expression of meek sweetness, and even so the quivering shadow of the lashes hovers upon her cheeks. It is all there, and yet it is not there. What is lacking? A nothing, but that nothing is everything. “There you have the semblance of life, but you do not express its fulness and effluence, that indescribable something, perhaps the soul itself, that envelopes the outlines of the body like a haze; that flower of life, in short, that Titian and Rafael caught. Your utmost achievement hitherto has only brought you to the starting-point. You might now perhaps begin to do excellent work, but you grow weary all too soon; and the crowd admires, and those who know smile.” “Oh, Mabuse! oh, my master!” cried the strange speaker, “thou art a thief! Thou hast carried away the secret of life with thee!” “Nevertheless,” he began again, “this picture of yours is worth more than all the paintings of that rascal Rubens, with his mountains of Flemish flesh raddled with vermilion, his torrents of red hair, his riot of color. You, at least have color there, and feeling and drawing--the three essentials in art.” The young man roused himself from his deep musings. “Why, my good man, the Saint is sublime!” he cried. “There is a subtlety of imagination about those two figures, the Saint Mary and the Shipman, that can not be found among Italian masters; I do not know a single one of them capable of imagining the Shipman’s hesitation.” “Did that little malapert come with you?” asked Porbus of the older man. “Alas! master, pardon my boldness,” cried the neophyte, and the color mounted to his face. “I am unknown--a dauber by instinct, and but lately come to this city--the fountain-head of all learning.” “Set to work,” said Porbus, handing him a bit of red chalk and a sheet of paper. The newcomer quickly sketched the Saint Mary line for line. “Aha!” exclaimed the old man. “Your name?” he added. The young man wrote “Nicolas Poussin” below the sketch.