"Oh, I know!" exclaimed Bettina, eagerly. "I have heard papa and mamma talk about the same thing more than once, only of course Michael Angelo was not their subject. In the first place, he must have realized that God sent him into the world to do something, and also that He had not left him alone, but was with him. Papa always says that to realize this begins everything that is good."
"Yes," interrupted Barbara. "He did feel this. Don't you remember that he wrote in one of his letters that we were reading in that library book the other day, 'Make no intimacies with any one but the Almighty alone'? I was particularly struck by it, because just before I read it, I was thinking what a lonely man he was."
"Yes, dear, I remember. And in the next place," continued Bettina, "papa says we must get ourselves ready to do as great work as is possible, so that may be given us. If we do not prepare ourselves, this cannot be. You know how Michael Angelo studied and studied there in Florence when he was a young man; how he never spared himself, but 'toiled tremendously,' as some one has said. And, next, we must do in the very best way possible even the smallest thing God sees fit to give us to do, so that we may be found worthy to do greater ones. But, Malcom, you know all this as well or better than I do, and I know you are trying to do these things too!" and Bettina blushed at the thought that she had been preaching.
But Malcom laughed, and looked as if he could listen to so sweet a preacher forever. Never were there two better comrades than he and Bettina had been all their lives.
Barbara said little. There was a far-away look in her eyes that told of unexpressed thought. She was pondering that which the morning had brought; and underneath and through all was the happy knowledge that her hero had not failed her. As usual he had committed new gifts into her keeping. And the gentle, almost intimate, tones of his voice when he was talking to her,—she felt it was to herself alone, though others heard—dwelt like music in her ears.
Mr. Sumner had been calmed by the lesson of Michael Angelo's frescoes, as he had often been before. In the presence of eternal verities,—however they may be embodied to us,—our own private concerns must ever grow trivial. What matters a little unrest or disappointment, or even unhappiness, when our thought is engaged with untold ages of God's dealing with mankind? With the wondrous fact that God is with man,—Immanuel,—forever and forevermore?
That evening he spent with the family in their pretty sitting room, and in answer to some questions about the Last Judgment, talked for a few minutes about this large fresco, which occupied seven years of Michael Angelo's life. He told them that although it is not perhaps so great as a work of art as the ceiling frescoes, yet because of its conception, of the number of figures introduced, the boldness of their treatment, and the magnificence of their drawing, it stands unrivalled. He said they ought to study it, bit by bit, group by group, after having once learned to understand its design.
They talked of the grim humor of the artist in giving his Belial—the master of Hades—the face of the master of ceremonies of the chapel, who found so much fault with his painting of nude figures.
"That was the chief feature of interest in the picture to that group of young people who stood so long before it this morning," said Mr. Sumner. "I often notice that the portrait of grouty old Biagio attracts more attention than any other of the nearly three hundred figures in the picture."
"I don't wonder, for I want to see it too," said Malcom, laughing.