I
shall never touch a brush! I believe I have neither eaten nor slept.
Look at that canvas!" he went on, as I relieved my emotion in an urgent
request that he would come home with me and dine. "That was to have
contained my masterpiece! Isn't it a promising foundation? The elements
of it are all _here_." And he tapped his forehead with that mystic
confidence which had marked the gesture before. "If I could only
transpose them into some brain that has the hand, the will! Since I have
been sitting here taking stock of my intellects, I have come to believe
that I have the material for a hundred masterpieces. But my hand is
paralysed now, and they will never be painted. I never began! I waited
and waited to be worthier to begin, and wasted my life in preparation.
While I fancied my creation was growing it was dying. I have taken it
all too hard! Michael Angelo didn't, when he went at the Lorenzo! He
did his best at a venture, and his venture is immortal. _That's_ mine!"
And he pointed with a gesture I shall never forget at the empty canvas.
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