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Updated: October 13, 2025
Mabuse said so himself with vexation in his sober moments." Poussin looked alternately at the old man and at Porbus with uneasy curiosity.
Porbus, amazed by the passionate violence with which he uttered these words, knew not how to answer a feeling so novel and yet so profound. Was the old man under the thraldom of an artist's fancy? Or did these ideas flow from the unspeakable fanaticism produced at times in every mind by the long gestation of a noble work? Was it possible to bargain with this strange and whimsical being?
It may be that I have up there," he added, letting a smile of satisfaction flicker on his lip, "Nature herself. At times I am half afraid that a brush may wake this woman, and that she will disappear from sight." He rose suddenly, as if to depart at once. "Wait," exclaimed Porbus. "I have come in time to spare you the costs and fatigues of such a journey." "How so?" asked Frenhofer, surprised.
"But the saint is sublime, good sir!" cried the young man in a loud voice, waking from a deep reverie. "These figures, the saint and the boatman, have a subtile meaning which the Italian painters cannot give. I do not know one of them who could have invented that hesitation of the boatman." "Does the young fellow belong to you?" asked Porbus of the old man.
That hair, is it not bathed in light? Why, she breathes! That bosom, see! Ah! who would not worship it on bended knee? The flesh palpitates! Wait, she is about to rise; wait!" "Can you see anything?" whispered Poussin to Porbus. "Nothing. Can you?" "No."
"Can it be," said Gillette, looking steadily at Poussin and at Porbus, "that I am nothing more than a woman to him?" She raised her head proudly; and as she glanced at Frenhofer with flashing eyes she saw her lover gazing once more at the picture he had formerly taken for a Giorgione. "Ah!" she cried, "let us go in; he never looked at me like that!"
Why did you come here? My good Porbus," he added, turning to his friend, "is it possible that you, too, are jesting with me? Answer; I am your friend. Tell me, can it be that I have spoiled my picture?" Porbus hesitated, and feared to speak; but the anxiety painted on the white face of the old man was so cruel that he was constrained to point to the canvas and utter the word, "See!"
An upper floor was imposed on the Petite Galerie, and adorned with paintings representing the kings of France. Unhappily the fire of 1661 destroyed all the portraits save that of Marie de' Medici by Porbus, and all the subsequent decorations by Poussin.
The little old man turned up his cuffs with convulsive haste, slipped his thumb through the palette charged with prismatic colors, and snatched, rather than took, the handful of brushes which Porbus held out to him. As he did so his beard, cut to a point, seemed to quiver with the eagerness of an incontinent fancy; and while he filled his brush he muttered between his teeth:
A sublime painter, indeed; but he had the misfortune to be born rich, and that enables him to stray into theory and conjecture. Do not imitate him. Work! work! painters should theorize with their brushes in their hands." "We will contrive to get in," cried Poussin, not listening to Porbus, and thinking only of the hidden masterpiece.
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