One night during the last week before the expiration of the allotted time, a thought which could not fail to lead him to his goal, darted into his brain like a revelation.
A beautiful woman, with a child standing in her lap, adorned the canvas.
What efforts he had made to lend these features the right expression.
Memory should aid him to gain his purpose. What woman had ever been fairer, more tender and loving than his own mother?
He distinctly recalled her eyes and lips, and during the last few days remaining to him, his Madonna obtained Florette’s joyous expression, while the sensual, alluring charm, that had been peculiar to the mouth of the musician’s daughter, soon hovered around the Virgin’s lips.
Ay, this was a mother, this must be a true mother, for the picture resembled his own!
The gloomier the mood that pervaded his own soul, the more sunny and bright the painting seemed. He could not weary of gazing at it, for it transported him to the happiest hours of his childhood, and when the Madonna looked down upon him, it seemed as if he beheld the balsams behind the window of the smithy in the market-place, and again saw the Handsome nobles, who lifted him from his laughing mother’s lap to set him on their shoulders.
Yes! In this picture he had been aided by the “joyous art,” in whose honor Paolo Veronese, had at one of Titian’s banquets, started up, drained a glass of wine to the dregs, and hurled it through the window into the canal.
He believed himself sure of success, and could no longer cherish anger against Isabella. She had led him back into the right path, and it would be sweet, rapturously sweet, to bear the beloved maiden tenderly and gently in his strong arms over the rough places of life.
One morning, according to the agreement, he notified Coello that the Madonna was completed.