Luckily for him, having worked with his father in his boyhood, and having watched him work a thousand times since, the processes of water-color work were familiar to him, as well as the geometrical principles of decoration; but when he attempted to select his subjects, he was oppressed by the superabundance of his ideas, and the prodigality of his imagination put him on the rack. He passed two nights drawing his compositions, and all day on his scaffolding, adjusting them to the space at his command. He did not think of sleeping or eating, or even of improving his acquaintance with his young sister, until his work was definitely laid out. At last it was done, and he transferred his labors to the courtyard of an old ruined chapel in the centre of the park, where his canvas ceiling, forty feet long, was stretched on the ground. There, assisted by several zealous apprentices, who handed him his colors all ready for use, and walking barefooted over his mythological sky, he prayed to the muses to impart to his trembling hand the necessary skill and boldness; and at last, armed with a gigantic brush, which might fitly have been called a broom, he sketched his Olympus and worked with so much fire and hope that the canvas was ready to be put in place two days before the ball. He had still to superintend its removal and installation, and to retouch such parts as were necessarily damaged in that process. And then he also had to assist his father, who, having been delayed by him, still had many borders of wainscots and cornices to finish. That week passed like a dream to Michel, and the few moments of repose in which he indulged seemed to him delicious beyond words. The villa was wonderfully beautiful inside as well as outside. The gardens and the park gave one an idea of the earthly paradise. Nature is so teeming in that country, the flowers so beautiful and sweet, the vegetation so luxuriant, the streams so clear and swift, that art has little to do in order to create fairyland around the palaces there. Not that blocks of lava and vast fields of ashes do not, here and there, present the image of desolation beside the Elysian Fields. But those horrors add to the charm of the oases which the volcanic flames have spared.