As the story runs, Tiburce, a young dilettante painter, had always found more beauty in the feminine creations of the great painters than in the most lovely flesh-and-blood women he ever met, so he spent much time in contemplating these exquisite creations of art. At length, from having studied certain Flemish pictures, he decided to go into Belgium “in search of the blonde”--he would love a Fleming. In Brussels and in Laeken the quest of this new Jason was unsuccessful, so he went to Antwerp, where he was as diligent as before--and equally without reward. At length he saw in the Cathedral Rubens’ masterpiece, “The Descent from the Cross,” and was stricken dumb by the beauty of the Magdalen in this remarkable picture. “The sight of that face was to Tiburce a revelation from on high; scales fell from his eyes, he found himself face to face with his secret dream, with his unavowed hope; the intangible image which he had pursued with all the ardor of an amorous imagination, and of which he had been able to espy only the profile or the ravishing fold of a dress; the capricious and untamed chimera, always ready to unfold its restless wings, was there before him, fleeing no more, motionless in the splendor of its beauty.” Then followed daily visits to the Cathedral, rapt, dazed, worshiping. One day on the street Tiburce catches sight of a woman who bears--a striking resemblance to the Magdalen! Her--Gretchen--he eventually meets, and to her he reluctantly gives his love. Yet, though Gretchen comes to love Tiburce, she cannot evoke in him quite the same feelings he knows in the presence of Rubens’ beautiful woman--the Magdalen is still his ideal. Even when he christens the girl with the name of the Penitent, the transformation is not complete. At length Gretchen, hidden behind a pillar, overhears Tiburce sighing out his worship toward the woman of the painting: “How I would love thee to-morrow if thou wert living!”--and realizes that she is loved only vicariously. By and by they go to Paris, where the artist feels his love for the absent Magdalen grow instead of wane, and Gretchen can bear her jealous unhappiness no longer. She breaks out into a tender eloquence of reproach: “You are ambitious to love; you are deceived concerning yourself, you will never love. You must have perfection, the ideal and poesy--all those things which do not exist. Instead of loving in a woman the love that she has for you, of being grateful to her for her devotion and for the gift of her heart, you look to see if she resembles that plaster Venus in your study.... You are not a lover, poor Tiburce, you are simply a painter.” And so she goes on, uncovering to him his foolish delusion, ending in a passion of abandonment, of “sublime immodesty,” by appearing before him like Aphrodite rising from the sea.