The Sistine Chapel! One steady sweep of the eye! It was easy—oh, so easy! So self-evident! Thus a cumulating agony ended forever in a supreme moment of relief; and Louis knew, once and for all, that he could see anything that eye could see. He would not have used the word “momentum”—an academic word—he would have called it the work of a man powerful even in old age. Louis spent three days in Rome—two of them in the Sistine—alone there, almost all the time. Here he communed in the silence with a Super-Man. Here he felt and saw a great Free Spirit. Here he was filled with the awe that stills. Here he came face to face with his first great Adventurer. The first mighty man of Courage. The first man with a Great Voice. The first whose speech was Elemental. The first whose will would not be denied. The first to cry yea! in thunder tones. The first mighty Craftsman. The man, the man of super-power, the glorified man, of whom he had dreamed in his childhood, of whom he prophesied in his childhood, as he watched his big, strong men build stone walls, hew down trees, drive huge horses—his mighty men, his heroes, his demigods; a powerful presentiment which he had seen and felt in the glory of the sunrise; which he had heard in the voice of spring; and which, personified through the haze of most mystical romantic trances, he believed in, he had faith in—that faith which is far removed from fancy, that faith which is near its source and secure.
Now was he in that veritable dreamed-of Presence. Here was that great and glorious personality. Here was power as he had seen it in the mountains, here was power as he had seen it in the prairies, in the open sky, in the great lake stretching like a floor toward the horizon, here was the power of the forest primeval. Here was the power of the open—of the free spirit of man striding abroad in the open. Here was the living presence of a man who had done things in the beneficence of power. And Louis gazed long and long, as one enthralled. And with his own eyes, with his own responses, he discerned more and more. There seemed to come forth from this great work a mystery; he began to see into it, and to discern the workings of a soul within. From beneath the surface significance there emerged that which is timeless, that which is deathless, that which in its immensity of duration, its fecundity, its ever-present urge, we call life. And in this great outpouring which encompassed him, he saw the Dreamer at his work. For no hand, unaided, could do this; no intellect unaided could do this; Imagination alone could do this; and Imagination, looked into, revealed itself as uncompromising faith in Life, as faith in man, and especial faith in his wondrous powers. He saw that Imagination passes beyond reason and is a consummated act of Instinct—the primal power of Life at work. Thus Louis pondered as he viewed o’er and o’er the Persian Sibyl. Forty-nine years have come and gone since a youth of eighteen thought these thoughts without words; alone in the Sistine.
“There was a child went forth every day.”
Louis saw Florence and does not know how he came to break the golden chains that bound him there, a too willing captive. It needed full six weeks to part a net that seemed but of gossamer; or was it the fragrance of Lotus Land?
And the rocky coast of the Riviera, alive with beauty and with color implanted by the hand of man near the water’s edge, on the crags which came down from the foot of the mountains to indent the sea—precious spots in memory’s hold. And the solid blue sea, with sky as solid blue—ineffable blue—wondrous blue—Mediterranean and Riviera—sea and mountain range, a revelation and a piercing joy—how could such things be? Then on to Nice, to Paris—and hard work again.
Louis was keyed for every form of anticipated effort; keen and anxious to observe, to analyse, to compare; to start on the second phase of his program, the purport of which was to ascertain what the Great School had to give, what Monsieur Vaudremer had to give, and to get close to the glowing heart of French Culture, as nearly as he might. It was his purpose to live, in fact; to absorb, to contemplate. He felt he had no time to lose, that he must press on. Insatiable curiosity urged him.
He went back to his old quarters on the seventh, with its northward spreading view. Nightly he sat long
