Page:A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales (1875).djvu/276

270 "Golden words,—golden words, young man!" he cried, with a tender smile. "'Invent, create, achieve!' Yes, that's our business: I know it well. Don't take me, in Heaven's name, for one of your barren complainers,—querulous cynics who have neither talent nor faith! I'm at work!"—and he glanced about him and lowered his voice as if this were a quite peculiar secret,—"I'm at work night and day. I've undertaken a creation! I'm no Moses; I'm only a poor, patient artist; but it would be a fine thing if I were to cause some slender stream of beauty to flow in our thirsty land! Don't think me a monster of conceit," he went on, as he saw me smile at the avidity with which he adopted my fantasy; "I confess that I'm in one of those moods when great things seem possible! This is one of my nervous nights,—I dream waking! When the south-wind blows over Florence at midnight, it seems to coax the soul from all the fair things locked away in her churches and galleries; it comes into my own little studio with the moonlight, and sets my heart beating too deeply for rest. You see I am always adding a thought to my conception! This evening I felt that I could n't sleep unless I had communed with the genius of Michael!"

He seemed deeply versed in local history and tradition, and he expatiated con amore on the charms of Florence. I gathered that he was an old resident, and