“That might have been my peril once,” answered Hilda.  “It is not so now.”

“Yes, fair maiden, you stand in that peril now!” insisted the kind old man; and he added, smiling, yet in a melancholy vein, and with a German grotesqueness of idea, “Some fine morning, I shall come to the Pinacotheca of the Vatican, with my palette and my brushes, and shall look for my little American artist that sees into the very heart of the grand pictures!  And what shall I behold?  A heap of white ashes on the marble floor, just in front of the divine Raphael’s picture of the Madonna da Foligno!  Nothing more, upon my word!  The fire, which the poor child feels so fervently, will have gone into her innermost, and burnt her quite up!”

“It would be a happy martyrdom!” said Hilda, faintly smiling.  “But I am far from being worthy of it.  What troubles me much, among other troubles, is quite the reverse of what you think.  The old masters hold me here, it is true, but they no longer warm me with their influence.  It is not flame consuming, but torpor chilling me, that helps to make me wretched.”

“Perchance, then,” said the German, looking keenly at her, “Raphael has a rival in your heart?  He was your first love; but young maidens are not always constant, and one flame is sometimes extinguished by another!” Hilda shook her head, and turned away.  She had spoken the truth, however, in alleging that torpor, rather than fire, was what she had to dread.  In those gloomy days that had befallen her, it was a great additional calamity that she felt conscious of the present dimness of an insight which she once possessed in more than ordinary measure.  She had lost—­and she trembled lest it should have departed forever—­the faculty of appreciating those great works of art, which heretofore had made so large a portion of her happiness.  It was no wonder.

A picture, however admirable the painter’s art, and wonderful his power, requires of the spectator a surrender of himself, in due proportion with the miracle which has been wrought.  Let the canvas glow as it may, you must look with the eye of faith, or its highest excellence escapes you.  There is always the necessity of helping out the painter’s art with your own resources of sensibility and imagination.  Not that these qualities shall really add anything to what the master has effected; but they must be put so entirely under his control, and work along with him to such an extent, that, in a different mood, when you are cold and critical, instead of sympathetic, you will be apt to fancy that the loftier merits of the picture were of your own dreaming, not of his creating.

Like all revelations of the better life, the adequate perception of a great work of art demands a gifted simplicity of vision.  In this, and in her self-surrender, and the depth and tenderness of her sympathy, had lain Hilda’s remarkable power as a copyist of the old masters.  And now that her capacity of emotion was choked up with a horrible experience, it inevitably followed that she should seek in vain, among those friends so venerated and beloved, for the marvels which they had heretofore shown her.  In spite of a reverence that lingered longer than her recognition, their poor worshipper became almost an infidel, and sometimes doubted whether the pictorial art be not altogether a delusion.