"
"Are we to be silent then over the work of Donna Sovrani?" enquired
the Abbe gaily. "Must we not express our admiration?"
"If you have any admiration to express," said Angela carelessly,
setting, as she spoke, an easel facing the Cardinal; "but I am
afraid you will greatly disapprove of me and condemn all my work
this year. I should explain to you first that I am composing a very
large picture,--I began it in Rome some three years ago, and it is
in my studio there,--but I require a few French types of countenance
in order to quite complete it. The sketches I have made here are
French types only. They will all be reproduced in the larger canvas-
-but they are roughly done just now. This is the first of them. I
call it 'A Servant of Christ, at the Madeleine, Paris.'"
And she placed the canvas she held on the easel and stood aside,
while all three men looked at it with very different eyes,--one with
poignant regret and pain,--the other with a sense of shame,--and the
third with a thrill of strong delight in the power of the work, and
of triumph in the lesson it gave.
IX.
Low beetling brows,--a sensual, cruel mouth with a loosely
projecting under-lip,--eyes that appeared to be furtively watching
each other across the thin bridge of nose,--a receding chin and a
narrow cranium, combined with an expression which was hypocritically
humble, yet sly,--this was the type Angela Sovrani had chosen to
delineate, sparing nothing, softening no line, and introducing no
redeeming point,--a type mercilessly true to the life; the face of a
priest,--"A servant of Christ," as she called him.
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