NOW that I am more tranquil, I will endeavor to speak calmly of the two portraits that follow the picture of the shepherdess of the Alps.

Raphael! Who but thyself could paint thy portrait; who but thyself would have dared attempt it? Thy open countenance, beaming with feeling and intellect, proclaims thy character and thy genius.

To gratify thy shade, I have placed beside thee the portrait of thy mistress, whom the men of all generations will hold answerable for the loss of the sublime works of which art has been deprived by thy premature death.

When I examine the portrait of Raphael, I feel myself penetrated by an almost religious respect for that great man, who, in the flower of his age, excelled the ancients, and whose pictures are at once the admiration and the despair of modern artists. My soul, in admiring it, is moved with indignation against that Italian who preferred her love to her lover, and who extinguished at her bosom that heavenly flame, that divine genius.

Unhappy one! Knewest thou not that Raphael had announced a picture superior even to that of the Transfiguration? Didst thou not know that thine arms encircled the favorite of nature, the father of enthusiasm, a sublime genius ... a divinity?

While my soul makes these observations, her companion, whose eyes are attentively fixed upon the lovely face of that fatal beauty, feels quite ready to forgive her the death of Raphael.

In vain my soul upbraids this extravagant weakness; she is not listened to at all. On such occasions a strange dialogue arises between the two, which terminates too often in favor of the bad principles, and of which I reserve a sample for another chapter.

And if, by the way, my soul had not at that moment abruptly closed the inspection of the gallery, if she had given the OTHER time to contemplate the rounded and graceful features of the beautiful Roman lady, my intellect would have miserably lost its supremacy.

And if, at that critical moment I had suddenly obtained the favor bestowed upon the fortunate Pygmalion, without having the least spark of the genius which makes me pardon Raphael his errors, it is just possible that I should have succumbed as he did.