"I paint women, messire," he said.
His lordship laughed.
"Divinities?"
Balthasar flourished his brush.
"Divine creatures, golden flowers of the world. Give me the rose to crush against my mouth, violets to burn upon my bosom. Truth, sire, consider the sparkling roundness of a woman's arm. Consider her wine-red lips, her sinful eyes, her lily fingers dropping spikenard into the soul. I confess, sire, that I am a man."
The friar's opulent extravagance of sentiment suited the litheness of his look. Balthasar had enthroned himself in his own imagination as a species of Apollo, a golden-tongued seer, whose soul soared into the glittering infinitudes of art. An immense egotist, he posed as a full-blooded divinity, palpitating to colour and to sound. He had as many moods as a vain woman, and was a mere fire-fly in the matter of honour.
"Reverend sire," quoth the man on the footstool with some tightening of the upper lip, "you bulk too big for your frock, methinks."
Balthasar touched a panel with his brush; cast a glance over his shoulder, with a cynical lifting of the nostril.
"My frock serves me, sire, as well as a coat of mail."
"And you believe the things you paint?"