Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-02-27
BEBEE;,
TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES.

that it soothed him. He had been swimming all his life in salt sea fed rapids this slugg1sn, dull canal water, mirroring between its rushes a life that had scarcely changed for centuries, had charm for him
 He stayed awhile in Antwerpen. The town is ugly and beautiful; it is like dull, quaint gres de Flandre jug, that has precious stones set inside its rim. It IS a burger ledger of bales and barrels, of sale and barter, of loss and gain; but in the heart of it there are H. lu1linated leaves of missSl vellum, all gold and color, and monkish story and heroic ballad that could only have been executed in the days when art was a religion.
 He gazed himself into an homage of Rubens, whom before he had slighted, never having known flor, unless you have seen Antwerp, it is as absurd to say that you have seen Rubens it Is to think that you have seen Murillo out of Seville, or Eaffaelle out of Rome) and he studied the Gretchen carefully, dehcately, synpathctically, for he loved Scheffer; but, though he tried, he failed to care for her.
 "She is only a peasant; she is not poem," he said to himself; "I will paint Gretchen for tho Salon of next year."
 But it was hard for him to portray a Gretchen. All his pictures were Phryne- Phryne in triumph, in ruin in a palace, in poorhouse, on a bed of roses, on a hospital mattress; Phryne laughing with a belt of jewels about her supple waist; Phryne lying with the stones of the dead house under her naked limbs-but always Phryne. Phryne, who living had death ill her smile; Phryne, who lifeless had blank despair on her face; Phryne, thing that lived furiously every second of her days, but Phryne thing that once being dead was carrion that could never live again.
 Phryne has many painters in this school, as many as Catherine and Cecilia had in the schools of tho Renaissance, and he was chief amidst them.
 How could he paint Gretchen if the pure Scheffer misseds Not even if, like the artist monks of old, he steeped his brushes all Lent through ill holy water.
 And in holy water he did not believe
 One evening, having left Antwcrpcn ring ing its innumereble bells over the grave of its dead Art, he leaned out Of tho easement of an absent friends old palace ii the Brabant street that is named after Mary of burgundy; an old easement crusted with Quaint cary ings and gilded round in Spanish fashion with many gargoyles and gritlirs and ilegible scutcheons.
 Leaning there, wondering with himself whether he would wait awhile and paint quietly in this dim street, haunted with the shades of Memling and Macs, and Otto Vcneris and Philip de Champagne, or whether he would go into the east end seek new types, and lie under the red Egyptian heavens and create true Cleopatra, which no man has ever done yet-a young Cleo patra, ankle deep in roses and fresh from Casar's kisses-leaning there, he saw little peasant go by below, with two little white feet in two wooden shoes, and face that had the pure and simple radiance of flower.
 "There is my Gretchen" he thought to III into the cathedral. If he could get what was in her face he would get what Scheffer could not.
 A little later, walking by her ill the green lanes, ha mcditated: 1t IS tho face of Gretchen, but not the soul-the Red Mouse has never passed this child's lips Neverthe- less"-
 "Nevertheles"-he said to himself and smiled
 For he, tho painter all his life long of Phryne living and of Phryne dead, believed that every daughter of Eve either vomits the Rcd Mouse or swallows it. It makes so little difference which-either way the Red Mouse has been there. And yet, strolling there i'll the dusly red of the evening, towards this little rush GOV. cred hut, he forgot the Red Mouse and began vaguely to sec that there are creatures of his mothers sex from whom the beast of the Brocken sinks away.
 But he still said to himself, "Neverthe less."
 "Nevertheless," for he knew well that l when the steel cuts the silk when the hound l hunts tho fawn, when the snake wooes tho | bird, when the king covcts tho vineyard 1 there is only one end possible ct any time. T. l is the strong against the weak. the flerc, against tho feeble, the subtle against tho
 simple, the master against the slave; there i l no equality ill the contest, and no justice-i
 is merely inevitable, and the issue of it i | written.