The Emptiness of Picture Galleries

"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.