“Still we can’t be certain how much of all this may be owing to the mere mannerisms of successive schools of art,” urged Mueller, sticking manfully to his own opinion.  “Where will you find a more decided mannerist than Holbein?  And because he was the first portrait-painter of his day, was he not reproduced with all his faults of literalness and dryness by a legion of imitators?  So with Sir Peter Lely, with Petitot, with Vandyck, with every great artist who painted kings and queens and court beauties.  Then, again, a certain style of beauty becomes the rage, and-a skilful painter flatters each fair sitter in turn by bringing up her features, or her expression, or the color of her hair, as near as possible to the fashionable standard.  And further, there is the dress of a period to be taken into account.  Think of the family likeness that pervades the flowing wigs of the courts of Louis Quatorze and Charles the Second—­see what powder did a hundred years ago to equalize mankind.”

Flandrin shook his head.

“Ingenious, mon garcon” said he; “ingenious, but unsound The cut of a fair lady’s bodice never yet altered the shape of her nose; neither was it the fashion of their furred surtouts that made Erasmus and Sir Thomas More as like as twins.  What you call the ‘mannerism’ of Holbein is only his way of looking at his fellow-creatures.  He and Sir Antonio More were the most faithful of portrait-painters.  They didn’t know how to flatter.  They painted exactly what they saw—­no more, and no less; so that every head they have left us is a chapter in the history of the Middle Ages.  The race—­depend on’t—­the race was unbeautiful; and not even the picturesque dress of the period (which, according to your theory, should have helped to make the wearers of it more attractive) could soften one jot of their plainness.”

“I can’t bring myself to believe that we were all so ugly—­French, English, and Germans alike—­only a couple of centuries ago,” said Mueller.

“That is to say, you prefer to believe that Holbein, and Lucas Cranach, and Sir Antonio More, and all their school, were mannerists.  Nonsense, my dear fellow—­nonsense! It is Nature who is the mannerist.  She loves to turn out a certain generation after a particular pattern; and when she is tired of that pattern, she invents another.  Her fancies last, on the average about, a hundred years.  Sometimes she changes the type quite abruptly; sometimes modifies it by gentle, yet always perceptible, degrees.  And who shall say what her secret processes are?  Education, travel, intermarriage with foreigners, the introduction of new kinds of food) the adoption of new habits, may each and all have something to do with these successive changes; but of one point at least we may be certain—­and that is, that we painters are not responsible for her caprices.  Our mission is to interpret Dame Nature more or less faithfully, according to our powers; but beyond interpretation