He continued in this patient endeavour for about three years, at the end of which his name was spoken throughout all Tuscany.  As his fame waxed, he began to be employed, besides easel-pictures, upon paintings in fresco:  but I believe that no traces remain to us of any of these latter.  He is said to have painted in the Duomo:  and D’Agincourt mentions having seen some portions of a fresco by him which originally had its place above the high altar in the Church of the Certosa; but which, at the time he saw it, being very dilapidated, had been hewn out of the wall, and was preserved in the stores of the convent.  Before the period of Dr. Aemmster’s researches, however, it had been entirely destroyed.

Chiaro was now famous.  It was for the race of fame that he had girded up his loins; and he had not paused until fame was reached:  yet now, in taking breath, he found that the weight was still at his heart.  The years of his labor had fallen from him, and his life was still in its first painful desire.

With all that Chiaro had done during these three years, and even before, with the studies of his early youth, there had always been a feeling of worship and service.  It was the peace-offering that he made to God and to his own soul for the eager selfishness of his aim.  There was earth, indeed, upon the hem of his raiment; but this was of the heaven, heavenly.  He had seasons when he could endure to think of no other feature of his hope than this:  and sometimes, in the ecstacy of prayer, it had even seemed to him to behold that day when his mistress—­his mystical lady (now hardly in her ninth year, but whose solemn smile at meeting had already lighted on his soul like the dove of the Trinity)—­even she, his own gracious and holy Italian art—­with her virginal bosom, and her unfathomable eyes, and the thread of sunlight round her brows—­should pass, through the sun that never sets, into the circle of the shadow of the tree of life, and be seen of God, and found good:  and then it had seemed to him, that he, with many who, since his coming, had joined the band of whom he was one (for, in his dream, the body he had worn on earth had been dead an hundred years), were permitted to gather round the blessed maiden, and to worship with her through all ages and ages of ages, saying, Holy, holy, holy.  This thing he had seen with the eyes of his spirit; and in this thing had trusted, believing that it would surely come to pass.

But now, (being at length led to enquire closely into himself,) even as, in the pursuit of fame, the unrest abiding after attainment had proved to him that he had misinterpreted the craving of his own spirit—­so also, now that he would willingly have fallen back on devotion, he became aware that much of that reverence which he had mistaken for faith had been no more than the worship of beauty.  Therefore, after certain days passed in perplexity, Chiaro said within himself, “My life and my will are yet before me:  I will take another aim to my life.”