Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/50

6, 1861.] He spoke in a strange plaintive tone.

“Ah!” cried the young man, moving towards him, “that is Francesco’s voice. Unsay your words, cousin. You are not dying?”

“Living then—for the misery, and shame, and sorrow of life.”

“Living for your art, Francesco.”

He gave a wild, shrieking, unearthly laugh.

“For my art?—it is dead—look here,” and he drew his cousin to the further end of the chamber, and tumbling down a pile of canvases, turned one over with its face to the light. “Look, do you see this?”

“The Roman Lucretia,” said Geronimo. “You are indeed Francesco. If I cannot see it in your face, I see it here. Cousin, it is divine. But why unfinished—to work and complete it!”

“I cannot—look into the eyes.”

“They are glorious—they glow with life—they move—”

“You see it then?” and he laughed again. “Yes, they are her eyes. It is her face. I can paint that only. I see but that. I try to work, but then she looks upon me out of the canvas with eyes of love, of sorrow, of reproach, and—and the tears cloud my sight, cousin. I can paint no more.”

“Of whom do you speak?”

“Catarina.”

But the word conveyed no meaning to Geronimo. He wrung his cousin’s hand kindly.

“It is the secret of your heart, Francesco,” he said, in a low voice. “It is holy ground—I will not seek to trespass on it.” And he turned away.

For some minutes neither spoke.

“To think that you, cousin, should cease to paint!” exclaimed Geronimo at last. “You, with the crown of our profession within your arm’s reach; you, with your skill, your power, your genius—self-critical, and dissatisfied, and desponding! What hope is there for me, then,—a poor plodder only—a simple struggler in the ranks, never to rise to a command? You, the painter of the Madonna in the Air, heavenly in her beauty, robed in golden gauze, the bright flesh glowing through the draperies; the Infant