After him the rest was silence.  Among the religious youth of to-day no one is to be found equal to the presentment of Church subjects.  “Only one,” said Durtal, thinking it over, “gave any hope of such powers, for he stands apart from the rest, and, at any rate, has talent.”

He rose and went to turn over his portfolios, picking out the lithographs by Charles Dulac.

This artist had begun with a series of landscapes, idealizing nature, at first with a timid hand—­extravagantly large pools, and trees with leaves that looked like wild wigs tossed by the wind; then he had produced a rendering in black and white of a Canticle of the Sun, or of Creation, and had poured out in nine plates, printed in different states of tone, that effluence of mystical feeling which in his first set was still latent and undecided.

The rather hackneyed dictum that “a landscape is a state of mind,” was strictly appropriate to this work; the artist had stamped his faith on these views, studied, no doubt, from nature, but seen, it was evident, not by the eyes alone, but by a captivated spirit singing in the open air Daniel’s hymn and David’s psalm, as interpreted by Saint Francis, and repeating after them the thought that all the Elements shall sing to the glory of Him who created them.

Among these plates two were genuinely inspiring:  that with the title, Stella Matutina, and the other with the words, Spiritus Sancte Deus; but another, the broadest, the most decisive, and the simplest of them all, bearing the title Sol Justitiae, seemed best of all to set forth the individual sympathies of the artist.

It was thus composed:  A light, remote, translucent distance was lost in infinitude—­a peninsula, a desert waste of waters with ribs of shore, tongues of land planted with trees repeated in the mirror of the lake; on the horizon the sun, half set, cast its beams reflected by the sheet of waters; that was all, but amazing placidity and calm, a sense of fulness was shed over all.  The idea of justice, to which that of mercy answers as its inevitable echo, was symbolized in the serene solemnity of this expanse lighted up by the glow of a kindly season and mild atmosphere.

Durtal drew back to get a more complete view of the work as a whole.

“There is no denying it,” said he; “this artist has the instinct, the subtle sense of aerial space, of expanse; he understands the soul of calm waters flowing under a vast sky!  And then, this print diffuses emanations as from a Catholic, which steal into us, slowly soak into our heart.