Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/246

Rh came into her face; then she stooped to the little children playing with the berries on the altar-steps, and put some money in their little brown hands.

"It is a very fine picture," she said, after a moment's pause. "I do not think I have ever seen brown and gold and crimson so beautifully managed, and fused in so deep a glow of colour save in Palma Vecchio's S. Barbara—you remember—in S. Maria Formosa in Venice?"

"The portrait of Violante Palma—yes. But this subject has a deeper and warmer interest. S. Barbara with her tower and her cannon is too strong to touch one very much. One cannot think that she ever suffered."

"Yet S. Barbara has a very wide popularity, if one may use the word to a saint."

"All symbols of strength have; the people are weak; they love what will help them. It is very singular what deep root and vast fame one saint has, and how obscure remains another; yet both equal in holiness and life, and courage of death. Perhaps the old painters have done it by the frequency of their choice of certain themes."