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Loadstar 161
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sr.flanders 2
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2022-08-26
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One day, when the custodian was
out of the way and the doors left
ajar, he got in for a moment after
his little friend and saw. "They"
were two great covered pictures on
either side of the choir.
Nello was kneeling, rapt as in an
ecstasy, before the altar-picture of
the Assumption, and when he noticed
Patrasche, and rose and drew the dog
gently out into the air, his face was
wet with tears, and he looked up at
the veiled places as he passed them,
and murmured to his companion, "It is
so terrible not to see them,
Patrasche, just because one is poor
and cannot pay! He never meant that
the poor should not see them when he
painted them, I am sure. He would
have had us see them any day, every
day: that I am sure. And they keep
them shrouded there--shrouded! in the
dark, the beautiful things!--and they
never feel the light, and no eyes
look on them, unless rich people come
and pay. If I could only see them, I
would be content to die."
But he could not see them, and
Patrasche could not help him, for to
gain the silver piece that the church
exacts as the price for looking on
the glories of the Elevation of the
Cross and the Descent of the Cross
was a thing as utterly beyond the
powers of either of them as it would
have been to scale the heights of the
cathedral spire. They had never so
much as a sou to spare: if they
cleared enough to get a little wood
for the stove, a little broth for the
pot, it was the utmost they could do.
And yet the heart of the child was
set in sore and endless longing upon
beholding the greatness of the two
veiled Rubens.
VI
THE whole soul of the little
Ardennois thrilled and stirred with
an absorbing passion for Art. Going
on his ways through the old city in
the early days before the sun or the
people had risen, Nello, who looked
only a little peasant-boy, with a
great dog drawing milk to sell from
door to door, was in a heaven of
dreams whereof Rubens was the god.
Nello, cold and hungry, with
stockingless feet in wooden shoes,
and the winter winds blowing among
his curls and lifting his poor thin
garments, was in a rapture of
meditation, wherein all that he saw
was the beautiful fair face of the
Mary of the Assumption, with the
waves of her golden hair lying upon
her shoulders, and the light of an
eternal sun shining down upon her
brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and
buffeted by fortune, and untaught in
letters, and unheeded by men, had the
compensation or the curse which is
called Genius.
No one knew it. He as little as
any. No one knew it. Only indeed
Patrasche, who, being with him
always, saw him draw with chalk upon
the stones any and every thing that
grew or breathed, heard him on his
little bed of hay murmur all manner
of timid, pathetic prayers to the
spirit of the great Master; watched
his gaze darken and his face radiate
at the evening glow of sunset or the
rosy rising of the dawn; and felt
many and many a time the tears of a
strange, nameless pain and joy,
mingled together, fall hotly from the
bright young eyes upon his own
wrinkled yellow forehead.
"I should go to my grave quite
content if I thought, Nello, that
when thou growest a man thou couldst
own this hut and the little plot of
ground, and labor for thyself, and be
called Baas by thy neighbors," said
the old man Jehan many an hour from
his bed. For to own a bit of soil,
and to be called Baas--master--by the
hamlet round, is to have achieved the
highest ideal of a Flemish peasant;
and the old soldier, who had wandered
over all the earth in his youth, and
had brought nothing back, deemed in
his old age that to live and die on
one spot in contented humility was
the fairest fate he could desire for
his darling. But Nello said nothing.
The same leaven was working in
him that in other times begat Rubens
and Jordaens and the Van Eycks, and
all their wondrous tribe, and in
times more recent begat in the green
country of the Ardennes)OoP
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