"Will you be famous?"
"Who was it never bade me good morning?" asked Cornelius, kissing me.
But in the very midst of the caress, as his lips touched my cheek, I repeated my question, with the unconquerable persistency of children:
"Will you be famous?"
"Would you like it?" he asked, smiling.
"Oh! so much!" I exclaimed, with my whole heart.
"Then, on my word, my dear, I shall do my best to please you; and now let us go down to breakfast."
He was unusually late, but his sister did not complain. She received him with pleasant cheerfulness; yet several times, in the course of that day, I overheard her sighing to herself very sadly.
I have since then wondered at the secretiveness of Cornelius; but though he was religious, he never spoke of religion; he rarely alluded to his country, for which he could do nothing, whose wrongs he resented too proudly to lament, and yet which he carried in his heart; and, perhaps because he loved it so ardently, he had never made painting the subject of daily speech. When it became the avowed occupation of his life—a task instead of a feeling—this reserve lessened; something of it remained with his sister; little, I might almost say nothing, with me.
I was a child, but I gave him sympathy, a food which the strongest hearts have needed. I loved him, I admired him, I believed in him; he soon liked to have me in his study, or studio, as by a convenient change of the vowels it was now called. He could talk to me, amuse himself with my criticisms, then with a look consign me to silence. Perhaps it was thus he became so fond of me,—too fond, his sister said; all I know is, he was very kind and the winter a very happy time.