Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/124

 subjects. Artists were low people who lived loosely. If Edward had said that he wished to be an artist, he would have been deprived of all pencils and grocery store paper. But Edward was a wise child. And he believed in being praised and encouraged instead of being scolded and opposed. Wherefore, although the two large library volumes filled with reproductions of masterpieces contained also pictures of battles and pagan odds and ends, he confined his copying to the religious subjects.

To this day Edward, with his eyes shut, can do a very forceful head of Christ, or having placed four or five curling and apparently meaningless lines on a sheet of paper can convert them with three or four touches of pure magic either into a classic Madonna and child or into the five little pigs who went to market.

The little hypocrite went to even greater lengths in order to win his mother's favor and praise. He confined himself to religious subjects, and when as sometimes happened the Old Master had omitted a fig leaf, Edward had tacked one on. When in later life he was painting the shadowed fig leaves on the gleaming white wall of the Corsican brigand's house in that fascinating little landscape which the Luxembourg bought, he smiled often to think under what circumstances and for what pur-