The stranger
was a young painter, who, seven years before, had gained the first
prize for painting. He had now just come back from Rome. His soul,
full-fed with poetry; his eyes, satiated with Raphael and Michael
Angelo, thirsted for real nature after long dwelling in the pompous
land where art has everywhere left something grandiose. Right or
wrong, this was his personal feeling. His heart, which had long been a
prey to the fire of Italian passion, craved one of those modest and
meditative maidens whom in Rome he had unfortunately seen only in
painting. From the enthusiasm produced in his excited fancy by the
living picture before him, he naturally passed to a profound
admiration for the principal figure; Augustine seemed to be pensive,
and did not eat; by the arrangement of the lamp the light fell full on
her face, and her bust seemed to move in a circle of fire, which threw
up the shape of her head and illuminated it with almost supernatural
effect. The artist involuntarily compared her to an exiled angel
dreaming of heaven. An almost unknown emotion, a limpid, seething love
flooded his heart. After remaining a minute, overwhelmed by the weight
of his ideas, he tore himself from his bliss, went home, ate nothing,
and could not sleep.
The next day he went to his studio, and did not come out of it till he
had placed on canvas the magic of the scene of which the memory had,
in a sense, made him a devotee; his happiness was incomplete till he
should possess a faithful portrait of his idol.
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