"Cause! Do you suppose they trouble themselves to find one? Not a bit of it. They simply scrawl a great R in chalk on the back of it, and send you a printed notice to carry it home again. What is it to them, if a poor devil has been painting his very heart and hopes out, day after day, for a whole year, upon that piece of canvas? Nothing, and less than nothing--confound them!"
I drew a chair before the picture, and set myself to a patient study of the details. He had chosen a difficult subject--the death of Louis XI. The scene represented a spacious chamber in the Castle of Plessisles-Tours. To the left, in a great oak chair beside the bed from which he had just risen, sat the dying king, with a rich, furred mantle loosely thrown around him. At his feet, his face buried in his hands, kneeled the Dauphin. Behind his chair, holding up the crucifix to enjoin silence, stood the king's confessor. A physician, a couple of councillors in scarlet robes, and a captain of archers, stood somewhat back, whispering together and watching the countenance of the dying man; while through the outer door was seen a crowd of courtiers and pages, waiting to congratulate King Charles VIII. It was an ambitious subject, and Müller had conceived it in a grand spirit. The heads were expressive; and the textures of the velvets, tapestries, oak carvings, and so forth, had been executed with more than ordinary finish and fidelity. For all this, however, there was more of promise than of achievement in the work. The lights were scattered; the attitudes were stiff; there was too evident an attempt at effect. One could see that it was the work of a young painter, who had yet much to learn, and something of the Academy to forget.
"Well," said Müller, still sitting ruefully on the floor, "what do you think of it? Am I rightly served? Shall I send for a big pail of whitewash, and blot it all out?"
"Not for the world!"
"What shall I do, then?"
"Do better."
"But, if I have done my best already?"
"Still do better; and when you have done that, do better again. So genius toils higher and ever higher, and like the climber of the glacier, plants his foot where only his hand clung the moment before."
"Humph! but what of my picture?"
"Well," I said, hesitatingly, "I am no critic--"