The son was away from the town on the occasion of our first visit.  The father seemed proud of him in a quiet, gentle sort of way, and gentleness was evidently the key-note to his character.  He said his son had carried off all the prizes in a Paris School of Art, and one prize that was especially difficult to obtain.  Would we come again and see him, and see his work?

We went again.  At the door-sill a little child greeted us; the most beautiful little face we had ever seen.  Nothing in any picture of an old master ever equalled it.  At the first moment we almost thought it the face of an angel, as it looked up into our faces with all the confidence and innocence of infancy.  The child might have been eighteen months old, just at the age when the eyes begin to take that inquiring look upon everything, as if they had just awakened to the fact that they had arrived upon a scene where all was new and strange.  The eyes of this child were large and of a celestial blue; fair curls fell over his shoulders; his cheeks were round like a cherub’s, and had the hue of the damask rose.  The strangest part about the face was its refinement, as if the little fellow, instead of being born of the people, had come of a long line of noble ancestors.

We went into the workshop, and there found the father of the child at work, the son of the old man.

We no longer wondered at the child’s beauty; it was a counterpart of the father’s, but to the latter was added all the grace and maturity of manhood.  Unlike the old man, the face was round and flushed with the hue of health.  Large dark blue eyes looked out earnestly at you from under long dark lashes.  The head was running over with dark crisp curls.  The face was also singularly refined, had an exceedingly pure and modest expression.  No Apollo, real or imagined, was ever more perfect in form and feature.  To look upon that face was to love its owner.

He was hard at work, carving, his wonderfully-drawn plans about him.  It was certainly the best modern work we had ever seen; and here, we felt, was a genius.  Probably it had been hampered for want of means, as so many other geniuses have been since the foundation of the world.  He ought to have been known and celebrated; the master of a great and famous atelier in the chief of gay cities; appreciated by the world—­and perhaps spoilt by flattery.  Instead of which, he was working for his daily bread in a small town, unknown, unappreciated; toiling in a small, retired workshop, where people seldom penetrated, and a good deal of his work depended upon chance.  Yet, if his face bespoke one thing more than another, it was happiness and contentment.  Ambition seemed to have no part in his life.  That he loved his art was evident from the tenderness with which he handled his drawings and looked upon his carvings.  It may be that this love was all-sufficient for him, and that as long as he had health to work, and fancy to create, and daily bread to eat, he cared for nothing more.