He pointed with his hand toward the studio, whose window sparkled softly in the starlight.
Rossel stared at him in amazement.
"You fear I am on the point of breaking into a divine frenzy," laughed the little man. "But I haven't yet confounded dreams and reality. That I have seen her, and have learned from her all sorts of things that other mortals do not yet know, is certain. But I believe myself that I only dreamed all this. It was on my very first morning out here. The evening before I had been reading the Last Centaur. The birds woke me very early, and then I lay for a few hours with closed eyes, and the whole story passed before me in a continuous train."
"What story?"
"I am now at work sketching it, after my own fashion, against which you will protest again. There is a cyclus of six or eight pictures--shall I tell you the story just as I am building it up in outline? It ought properly to be told in verse, but I am no poet. Enough, the scene opens with a mountain-cliff somewhere or other, the Hoesselberg, let us say, or any other mythological fastness in which a goddess could have lived apart from the world for a few centuries. From out it steps our dear Venus of Milo in proper person, leading by the hand a half-grown boy, who is no less a person than the little Amor. They are both but scantily clad, and gaze around with wondering eyes upon a world that has greatly changed since last they saw it. A city lies before them, with battlements and towers of strange shape standing out against the sky. Horsemen and pedestrians are coming out of the gate, dressed in bright-colored garments of a peculiar cut, which were nowhere in fashion in the world when the old gods were worshiped. The sky is clouded over, and a drizzling rain is gently falling, which forces the lady and her little boy to seek another place of refuge, since they can no longer find their way back to their old retreat. Yet they lack the courage to enter the town, with its swarming mass of human beings. But in the mountain over across the valley stands a high stone building, from which a tower, with a beautiful chime of bells, seems to ring out over the land an invitation for all men to draw near. It is true, this cannot be expressed in the sketch, but then the cloister over on the hill must have something homelike about it, so that everybody will understand why the fugitives, standing below in the rain, under shelter of a laurel bush, are gazing up at it with longing eyes. And now, when the sun breaks forth again, they muster up their courage and knock at the cloister gate. The nuns rush out at the cry their sister gate-keeper utters when she sees this queenly woman, with the black-eyed child of the gods, standing on the threshold, both half naked, and with their blonde hair falling about their shoulders. Then, too, as is natural, the nun understands no Greek, which would have enabled her to interpret the stranger's request for hospitality; nor can the abbess herself make out anything more as to the strangers' origin and character. But of one thing she is certain--this is not a strolling beggar of the usual sort. Thus, in the third picture, we see Madame Venus sitting in the refectory seeking to still her hunger; but the food is too coarse for her, and she tastes nothing but the cloister wine. They offer her a coarse, woolen nun's-dress, which, however, she scorns to wear. The only other dress they have on hand is the thin gown belonging to a beggar who died in the cloister a short time before. This she consents to put on; and although, here and there, her beautiful white skin peeps through a tear in the old rags, she seems to think this better than to be confined in the black shroud of the sisters. Her little boy has also been provided with a shirt, and is now being passed around from hand to hand, and lap to lap; for each of the nuns is eager to caress him. While they are sitting thus, on the best of terms, the priest of the place comes to have a talk with the abbess. He suspects something wrong, and stands on the threshold, dumb with amazement, and devours this strange beggar-woman with his eyes. But the little rascal of a boy goes up to him, and succeeds in making his reverence fall over head and ears in love with the strange lady, and scatter his older sentiments for the abbess to the four winds. A fourth sheet shows him as he strolls up and down the little cloister garden with Madame Venus, passionately declaring his love. At the window stands the pious mother of the convent, torn with jealousy; and it requires little imagination to foresee that her ecclesiastical friend has hardly turned his back before this dangerous guest is, under one pretext or another, thrust rudely forth into the wide world again, with her little boy--who is tired, and would have liked to sleep instead of having to wander about in the stormy night. But a house or hut is nowhere to be found, while, on the other hand, suspicious-looking groups pass by them: gypsies, who cast covetous eyes at the beautiful child; and one of them--a wicked, toothless old hag--actually catches him by the skirts of his little gown. But, fortunately, he glides out of her hands like an eel, and flies into the thicket, and his mother after him: who is so lost in thought that she scarcely heeds the danger. 'Where can all the others have gone?' is the question over which she broods ceaselessly.
"I don't know yet, myself, whether I shall show any more of her adventures by the way. Every day something new occurs to me, with which I might illustrate, both humorously and seriously, how, homeless and an outcast, this beauty had to beg her way through this sober world of ours. But, whenever she appeared at the door of simple and natural beings, she needed to utter no word, and not even to stretch out her hand. She touched the hearts of all; and every one--though here and there with a secret shudder--gave her from his poverty as much as he could spare. Young people, upon whom she had bestowed but a single glance, left house, and home, and calling, and wandered after her--through populous regions as well as through the wilderness--until, in their dreamy blindness, they fell over steep precipices, or into raging torrents, or came to an untimely end in one way or another. But she herself, growing sadder and sadder, wandered along her way, and thought of the times when the mortals who beheld her grew blissful and happy and not wretched, and when they gave banquets in her honor, and laid the most beautiful gifts at her feet; then she was a goddess, with a train of followers whose numbers were incalculable.
"Brooding in this way, she comes one evening to a celebrated pilgrims' chapel, lying in a charming little valley, and shaded on all sides by evergreen trees; and it is so late that no one observes her as she enters into the empty sanctuary with her boy--who is weary, and whose feet are sore--still holding fast to the skirts of her beggar's gown.
"Only the eternal lamp is still burning before the altar, but the moon shines through the arched windows, and it is as bright as day within. The godlike woman sees a brown, wooden, life-sized figure seated on a high throne. Two glass eyes glare upon her, and on the head flames a golden crown; a mantle of red velvet falls about the angular shoulders, and on her knees lies a wax child in swaddling clothes. She approaches quite near, and touches the mantle, and plucks at the heavy folds; whereupon the clasp on the neck of the image becomes unfastened, and the lean, wooden body appears, looking ghastly enough. A shudder creeps over the beautiful woman as she sees this image before her in all its lean, worm-eaten ugliness. 'Ah!' she thinks to herself, 'this princess's mantle will become me better than it does that old piece of carving!' and begins to wrap herself in its heavy folds, which give forth an odor of incense; and then she sets the crown on her head, and asks her boy whether she pleases him. But he only blinks at her a little, for he is tired to death. Then she takes pity on the poor child, lifts the image from its gilded throne, and the wax infant rolls to the ground and is dashed to pieces. She does not heed this, however, but mounts the steps and seats herself in the chair under the canopy, and the little Amor nestles warm in her lap, and, half covered by the velvet mantle, falls asleep on her heavenly bosom. All around her it is still; no sound is heard but the whirr of the bats as they fly hither and thither under the high dome, not daring to light on the crown of the stranger as they were accustomed to do upon the wooden image, being frightened away by the brightness of her eyes; until at last the eyes close, and the mother and son sleep quietly on their throne above the altar.
"In the early morning, even before the pilgrims who are encamped all about the chapel have awakened, a young man comes along the road, and, thinking no evil, enters the open portal, through which the gray light of morning has just begun to steal. He has often seen the wonder-working image that was worshiped here, but has never found that it exerted any particular power upon himself. And now he merely goes in and kneels down in a corner to let his heart commune with its God. But as his eyes roam absently about the chapel they encounter the divine apparition on the altar, sending a shock full of bliss and longing, adoration and rapture, to the very depths of his heart. Just at this moment the divine woman opens her eyes, makes a movement--which also wakes the boy--and has to think a little before she can remember where she is and how she came there. Her look falls upon the youth, who stands there gazing up at her, looking so handsome and earnest, and as if he were turned into a statue. She smiles graciously upon him, and moves her hand in token of greeting. Then a holy dread overcomes him, so that he flies from the chapel, and it is only when he is alone in the solitary wood that he recalls what he has seen, and realizes what a miracle has been revealed to him. And immediately the yearning comes back to him. Like a drunken man he staggers back to the chapel, where he finds the pilgrims already at their first mass. But the marvelously beautiful lady with the boy has vanished; the wooden Madonna is again enthroned under the baldachuin, and even a wax child lies upon her lap, for the priests have supplied the place of the broken one by another. Everything is in its old place, only the crown sits a little aslant on the brown, wooden head, for the sacristan has not succeeded in repairing the mysterious destruction any better. But the youth turns his steps homeward, and bears about with him, through his whole life, the after-glow of this wonderful apparition; striving always to represent, to his fellowmen who had not beheld it with their own eyes, how she had looked upon him--at first earnestly and dreamily, and then with a winning smile--and how the boy, with his wondering gaze, had illuminated everything about him, as if with balls of fire. And in his efforts to do this--for he was an artist--he has attained to greater and greater power and influence over his fellow-men, and each time has succeeded better in catching the face; and that is the secret which can be found in no history of art--the reason why this young Raphael has become the greatest of all painters, and his picture of the Madonna surpasses all others in beauty and in power."