"Yes, my dear Porbus," said Frenhofer, speaking half in reverie, "I
have never yet beheld a perfect woman; a body whose outlines were
faultless and whose flesh-tints--Ah! where lives she?" he cried,
interrupting his own words; "where lives the lost Venus of the
ancients, so long sought for, whose scattered beauty we snatch by
glimpses? Oh! to see for a moment, a single moment, the divine
completed nature,--the ideal,--I would give my all of fortune. Yes; I
would search thee out, celestial Beauty! in thy farthest sphere. Like
Orpheus, I would go down to hell to win back the life of art--"

"Let us go," said Porbus to Poussin; "he neither sees nor hears us any
longer."

"Let us go to his atelier," said the wonder-struck young man.

"Oh! the old dragon has guarded the entrance. His treasure is out of
our reach. I have not waited for your wish or urging to attempt an
assault on the mystery."

"Mystery! then there is a mystery?"

"Yes," answered Porbus. "Frenhofer was the only pupil Mabuse was
willing to teach. He became the friend, saviour, father of that
unhappy man, and he sacrificed the greater part of his wealth to
satisfy the mad passions of his master. In return, Mabuse bequeathed
to him the secret of relief, the power of giving life to form,--that
flower of nature, our perpetual despair, which Mabuse had seized so
well that once, having sold and drunk the value of a flowered damask
which he should have worn at the entrance of Charles V., he made his
appearance in a paper garment painted to resemble damask. The splendor