Stories of Childhood | Page 7

Nello by him in the sunny fields or in the busy
market-place. But to the churches Nello would go: most often of all
would he go to the great cathedral; and Patrasche, left without on the
stones by the iron fragments of Quentin Matsys's gate, would stretch
himself and yawn and sigh, and even howl now and then, all in vain,
until the doors closed and the child perforce came forth again, and
winding his arms about the dog's neck would kiss him on his broad,
tawny-colored forehead, and murmur always the same words: "If I
could only see them. Patrasche!--if I could only see them!"
What were they? pondered Patrasche, looking up with large, wistful,
sympathetic eyes.
One day, when the custodian was out of the way and the doors left ajar,
he got in for a moment after his little friend and saw. "They" were two
great covered pictures on either side of the choir.
Nello was kneeling, rapt as in an ecstasy, before the altar-picture of the
Assumption, and when he noticed Patrasche, and rose and drew the dog
gently out into the air, his face was wet with tears, and he looked up at
the veiled places as he passed them, and murmured to his companion,
"It is so terrible not to see them, Patrasche, just because one is poor and
cannot pay! He never meant that the poor should not see them when he
painted them, I am sure. He would have had us see them any day, every
day: that I am sure. And they keep them shrouded there,--shrouded in

the dark, the beautiful things!--and they never feel the light, and no
eyes look on them, unless rich people come and pay. If I could only see
them, I would be content to die."
But he could not see them, and Patrasche could not help him, for to
gain the silver piece that the church exacts as the price for looking on
the glories of the Elevation of the Cross and the Descent of the Cross
was a thing as utterly beyond the powers of either of them as it would
have been to scale the heights of the cathedral spire. They had never so
much as a sou to spare: if they cleared enough to get a little wood for
the stove, a little broth for the pot, it was the utmost they could do. And
yet the heart of the child was set in sore and endless longing upon
beholding the greatness of the two veiled Rubens.
The whole soul of the little Ardennois thrilled and stirred with an
absorbing passion for Art. Going on his ways through the old city in the
early days before the sun or the people had risen, Nello, who looked
only a little peasant-boy, with a great dog drawing milk to sell from
door to door, was in a heaven of dreams whereof Rubens was the god.
Nello, cold and hungry, with stockingless feet in wooden shoes, and the
winter winds blowing amongst his curls and lifting his poor thin
garments, was in a rapture of meditation, wherein all that he saw was
the beautiful fair face of the Mary of the Assumption, with the waves of
her golden hair lying upon her shoulders, and the light of an eternal sun
shining down upon her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and buffeted by
fortune, and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, had the
compensation or the curse which is called Genius.
No one knew it. He as little as any. No one knew it. Only indeed
Patrasche, who, being with him always, saw him draw with chalk upon
the stones any and every thing that grew or breathed, heard him on his
little bed of hay murmur all manner of timid, pathetic prayers to the
spirit of the great Master; watched his gaze darken and his face radiate
at the evening glow of sunset or the rosy rising of the dawn; and felt
many and many a time the tears of a strange nameless pain and joy,
mingled together, fall hotly from the bright young eyes upon his own
wrinkled, yellow forehead.
"I should go to my grave quite content if I thought, Nello, that when
thou growest a man thou couldst own this hut and the little plot of
ground, and labor for thyself, and be called Baas by thy neighbors,"

said the old man Jehan many an hour from his bed. For to own a bit of
soil, and to be called Baas--master--by the hamlet round, is to have
achieved the highest ideal of a Flemish peasant; and the old soldier,
who had wandered over all the earth in his youth, and had brought
nothing back, deemed in his old age that to live and