"I think I would rather feel that painting is beautiful than have to

read it as an enigma; but I should learn to understand these pictures

sooner than yours with the very wide meaning," said Dorothea, speaking

to Will.

"Don't speak of my painting before Naumann," said Will. "He will tell

you, it is all pfuscherei, which is his most opprobrious word!"

"Is that true?" said Dorothea, turning her sincere eyes on Naumann, who

made a slight grimace and said--

"Oh, he does not mean it seriously with painting. His walk must be

belles-lettres. That is wi-ide."

Naumann's pronunciation of the vowel seemed to stretch the word

satirically. Will did not half like it, but managed to laugh: and Mr.

Casaubon, while he felt some disgust at the artist's German accent,

began to entertain a little respect for his judicious severity.

The respect was not diminished when Naumann, after drawing Will aside

for a moment and looking, first at a large canvas, then at Mr.

Casaubon, came forward again and said--

"My friend Ladislaw thinks you will pardon me, sir, if I say that a

sketch of your head would be invaluable to me for the St. Thomas

Aquinas in my picture there. It is too much to ask; but I so seldom

see just what I want--the idealistic in the real."

"You astonish me greatly, sir," said Mr. Casaubon, his looks improved

with a glow of delight; "but if my poor physiognomy, which I have been

accustomed to regard as of the commonest order, can be of any use to

you in furnishing some traits for the angelical doctor, I shall feel

honored. That is to say, if the operation will not be a lengthy one;

and if Mrs. Casaubon will not object to the delay."

As for Dorothea, nothing could have pleased her more, unless it had

been a miraculous voice pronouncing Mr. Casaubon the wisest and

worthiest among the sons of men. In that case her tottering faith

would have become firm again.

Naumann's apparatus was at hand in wonderful completeness, and the

sketch went on at once as well as the conversation. Dorothea sat down

and subsided into calm silence, feeling happier than she had done for a

long while before. Every one about her seemed good, and she said to

herself that Rome, if she had only been less ignorant, would have been

full of beauty: its sadness would have been winged with hope. No nature

could be less suspicious than hers: when she was a child she believed

in the gratitude of wasps and the honorable susceptibility of sparrows,

and was proportionately indignant when their baseness was made manifest.




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