The White Sister | Page 2

has used the same tools for a dozen years is not likely to take his
chisel by the wrong end, nor to hesitate in choosing the right one for
the stroke to be made, much less to 'take a sledge-hammer to kill a fly,'
as the saying is. His unquiet mind has discovered some new and
striking relation between the true and the beautiful; the very next step is
to express that relation in clay, or in colour, or in words. While he is
doing so he rarely stops to think, or to criticise his own half-finished
work; he is too sure of himself, just then, to pause, and, above all, he is
too happy, for all the real happiness he finds in his art is there, between
the painfully disquieting ferment of the mental chaos that went before
and the more or less acute disappointment which is sure to come when
the finished work turns out to be less than perfect, like all things human.
It is in the race from one point to the other that he rejoices in his
strength, believes in his talent, and dreams of undying glory; it is then
that he feels himself a king of men and a prophet of mankind; but it is
when he is in this stage that he is called vain, arrogant, and
self-satisfied by those who do not understand the distress that has gone
before, nor the disillusionment which will follow soon enough, when

the hand is at rest and cool judgment marks the distance between a
perfect ideal and an attainable reality. Moreover, the less the lack of
perfection seems to others, the more formidable it generally looks to
the great artist himself.
It was often said of Durand that his portraits were prophetic; and often
again that his brushes were knives and scalpels that dissected his sitters'
characters upon the canvas like an anatomical preparation.
'I cannot help it,' he always said. 'I paint what I see.'
It was not his fault if pretty Donna Angela Chiaromonte had thrown a
white veil over her dark hair, just to try the effect of it, the very first
time she had been brought to his studio, or that she had been standing
beside an early fifteenth century altar and altar-piece which he had just
bought and put up at one end of the great hall in which he painted. He
was not to blame if the veiling had fallen on each side of her face, like a
nun's head-dress, nor if her eyes had grown shadowy at that moment by
an accident of light or expression, nor yet if her tender lips had seemed
to be saddened by a passing thought. She had not put on the veil again,
and he had not meant that a suggestion of suffering ecstatically borne
should dim her glad girlhood in his picture; but he had seen the vision
once, and it had come out again under his brush, in spite of him, as if it
were the necessary truth over which the outward expression was
moulded like a lovely mask, but which must be plain in her face to
every one who had once had a glimpse of it.
The painter contemplated his work in silence from within an Olympian
cloud of cigarette smoke that almost hid him from the others, who now
exchanged a few words in Italian, which he only half understood. They
spoke English with him, as they would have spoken French with a
Frenchman, and probably even German with a German, for modern
Roman society has a remarkable gift of tongues and is very
accomplished in other ways.
'What I think most wonderful,' said the Marchesa del Prato, who
detested her husband's pretty niece, 'is that he has not made a Carlo
Dolce picture of you, my dear. With your face, it would have been so

easy, you know!'
Giovanni Severi's hands moved a little and the scabbard of his sabre
struck one of his spurs with a sharp clink; for he was naturally
impatient and impulsive, as any one could see from his face. It was lean
and boldly cut; his cheeks were dark from exposure rather than by
nature, there were reddish lights in his short brown hair, and his small
but vigorous moustache was that of a rather fair man who has lived
much in sun and wind in a hot climate. His nose was Roman and
energetic, his mouth rather straight and hard; yet few would have
thought his face remarkable but for the eyes, which betrayed his nature
at a glance; they were ardent rather than merely bold, and the warm,
reddish-brown iris was shot with little golden points that coruscated in
the rays of the sun, but emitted a fiery light of their