“It isn’t such a good likeness as the first one,” I remarked, after I had murmured my admiration.
“Ah!” he said, with the pitying superiority of the artist. “But you don’t see her as I see her.”
There, I thought, is Art in a nutshell; the individual vision, the divination of the soul of things, hidden inexorably from the common eye. To see differently; a greener colour in the grass, a deeper blue in the sky, a madonna in a woman of the street, an angel in a child, God in all things—oh, enchanted Vision! they who have thee should be happier than kings.
“There, little one!” said the sculptor, giving her the first sketch; “take that to your mother and say I said she should be very proud of you. Heavens, I wish I could do a clay figure of her. I wish—”
He looked at her in a sort of ecstasy, sighed deeply, then stumped away looking very thoughtful.
“Is he not distinguished,” I said, “in spite of that foot of his?”
“Ah! that is so sad, I sink. But perhaps it is for the best he have foot like that. It make him more serious; it make him great artist.”
Trust Anastasia to find some compensation in all misfortune!
Frosine was plying that lightning needle when we returned. She looked up joyfully as the little one rushed to her with the sketch.
“Who did this? It is my little pigeon—truly, it is her very self.”