"She is only a peasant; she is not a poem," he said to himself; "I will
paint a Gretchen for the Salon of next year."
But it was hard for him to portray a Gretchen. All his pictures were
Phryne,--Phryne in triumph, in ruin, in a palace, in a poor-house, on a
bed of roses, on a hospital mattress; Phryne laughing with a belt of
jewels about her supple waist; Phryne lying with the stones of the
dead-house under her naked limbs,--but always Phryne. Phryne, who living
had death in her smile; Phryne, who lifeless had blank despair on her
face; Phryne, a thing that lived furiously every second of her days, but
Phryne a thing that once being dead was carrion that never could live
again.
Phryne has many painters in this school, as many as Catherine and Cecilia
had in the schools of the Renaissance, and he was chief amidst them.
How could he paint Gretchen if the pure Scheffer missed? Not even if,
like the artist monks of old, he steeped his brushes all Lent through in
holy water.
And in holy water he did not believe.
One evening, having left Antwerpen ringing its innumerable bells over the
grave of its dead Art, he leaned out of the casement of an absent
friend's old palace in the Brabant street that is named after Mary of
Burgundy; an old casement crusted with quaint carvings, and gilded round
in Spanish fashion, with many gargoyles and griffins, and illegible
scutcheons.
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