There are crowds before my picture at all times. They began to whisper the moment we entered; and this time they looked mostly, not at the picture, and not at me, but at Kazia. The women especially did not take their eyes from her. I saw that she was pleased with this fabulously; but I did not take it ill of her. I take it worse that she said of Antek's corpses, "that is not a decent picture." Suslovski declared that she had taken the words out of his mouth; but I was raging. To think that Kazia too should have such a view of art!
From anger I took farewell of them at once, on pretence that I must see Ostrynski. I went to his office, it is true, but to induce him to dine with me.
CHAPTER XI.
I SAW a miracle, and that's the end of it.
Now for the first time I understand why a man has eyes.
Corpo di Bacco; what beauty!
I am walking with Ostrynski; I see on a sudden at the corner of Willow Street some woman passing quickly. I stand as if fixed to the earth; I become oak; I become stone; I stare; I lose consciousness; without knowing it I seize Ostrynski by the cravat; I loosen his cravat—and—save me, or I die!
What that she has perfect features? It is not the features, she is simply an artist's ideal, a masterpiece as outline, a masterpiece as coloring, a masterpiece as sentiment. Greuze would have risen from the dead in her presence, and hanged himself then for having painted so much ugliness.
I gaze and gaze. She is walking alone,—how alone? Poetry is walking with her; music, spring, splendor, and love are walking with her. I know not whether I should prefer to paint her immediately; I should rather kneel before her and kiss her feet, because such a woman was born. Finally, do I know what I would do?