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We find a different quality in the art of the north. Italian spontaneity and child-like joy is absent; so, too, the sense of physical beauty, universal in Italy. You remember how the successors of the Van Eycks in Flanders painted excellent portraits and small carefully studied pictures of scriptural events in wonderful detail.
I watched every motion of his lips, every expression of his features, and every gleam of his great gray eyes, and I could but wonder at the child-like naturalness of everything about him. Is not this an attribute of greatness to be natural? Yes; to be natural in all things belongs to truth, and a truthful exhibition of nature, without assumption or deceit, is greatness.
In the whole of La Fontaine's works I only know five or six fables conspicuous for child-like simplicity; I will take the first of these as an example, for it is one whose moral is most suitable for all ages, one which children get hold of with the least difficulty, which they have most pleasure in learning, one which for this very reason the author has placed at the beginning of his book.
Think of the best child you can imagine; nay, think of a better than you can imagine of the one that God thinks of when he invents a child in the depth of his fatherhood: such child-like men and women must you one day become; and what day better to begin, than this blessed Christmas Morn? Let such a child be born in your hearts this day.
Words how impressive! manner how child-like, and yet so wise! John Harvey had had a praying mother. His chest labored for a moment the sobs that struggled for utterance could be heard even in their depths and still those large, soft, lustrous eyes, like magnets impelled his glance toward them. "Child you must have a pair of shoes." John Harvey's voice was husky.
I was touched by these words; touched, that is, by his child-like simplicity in imagining that he could bring me to believe a statement of such radiant improbability; so touched, that I pressed a franc into his reluctant palm and bade him buy with it something to eat. A whole franc. . . . Aha! he doubtless thought, my theory of the gentleman: it begins to work. It was barely midday.
"See here," I cried, "your little story of innocence and virtue is very clever, but I've looked you up and " "And what ," she asked, while through her child-like mask the subtle trickery of her nature mocked me with a look of triumph "and what do you propose to do about it?" I realized the futility of my rage. "I shall do nothing. I ask only that you return the book."
She turned her back on him, and rested her head on her hand. Opposite her bed was a mirror in a gold frame. She saw herself in it; she was pleased with herself lying there in that offended mood, and she smiled. Daniel, who had been so cruel to noble women now become shades, saw how she smiled at herself, infatuated with herself: he took pity on such child-like vanity.
Her auburn hair hung in loose and natural curls over her forehead, and its luxuriance was remarkable even in one so young. Her countenance was beautiful, nay, even faultless, in its small and child-like features, but the expression pained you it was so vacant.
Then she turned the full light on again and entered the room, dropping into one big leather chair at the side of the fireplace and indicating another big chair on the opposite side. She had no notion of sitting near him or of luring him to her side to-night. She had read him aright. Hers was the demure part to play, the reserved, shy maiden, the innocent, child-like, womanly woman.
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