Padraig was having his first view of a foreign country. England, to be
sure, was somewhat strange to a boy who had never before been outside
Ireland. Brother Basil, who had taught him all that he knew of writing,
reading, painting and other arts, had come to England on business for
the Irish Abbeys and was going no further. Padraig felt that he wanted
to see more of the world.
Perhaps the wise monk felt that unless his pupil had the chance now to
wander and come back, he would run away and never return at all; at
any rate he told the youth that this would be a good time to make the
pilgrimage to Rome if he could. There was peace in Lombardy for the
moment, and the Pope, driven out more than once by the warring Emperor
of Germany, was now in the Vatican, again.
A fishing-boat, slipping over to Calais in the light of a windy dawn,
carried one passenger, a red-headed boy in a hooded cloak of rough black
frieze. Padraig's own feet bore him from town to town until now, in a
French city, he stood in the doorway of a gray and stately church alive
with pictures. On a scaffold slung up behind the altar a painter sat
working on a new altar-piece.
This was something which Padraig had never seen. He had painted pictures
himself on parchment, and drawn designs in color for the craftsmen, but
a wall-painting so full of life and color that it looked like a live
angel come down from the skies, he had never seen made by any man.
It was in three parts, filling three arches, the middle one larger than
the others. In the center was the beautiful brooding Mother with the
Child in her arms, and her dull red mantle seemed to lift and float like
a sunset cloud. In the narrower spaces were figures of saints. One,
already finished, was an old man in the dress of a hermit, with a hind;
the graceful creature nestled its head against him. An arrow transfixed
his knee, and Padraig knew that this was Saint Giles, patron saint of
cripples. The last of the three, on which the artist was now working,
was Saint Margaret and the dragon. The dragon was writhing away, with
a dreadful look of rage and fear, before the cross in the hands of the
brave, beautiful young girl. The sun crept through a loophole window and
made the pictures, at the end of the long vista of gray arches, as real
as living beings.
Even at this distance, nevertheless, the trained eye of Padraig detected
something the matter with that dragon. The artist painted, scraped
out, scowled, pondered and finally flung down his brushes in impatient
disgust. He moved away, his eyes still on the unfinished work, and
backed directly into Padraig.
"What--oh, I did not know that there was any one here. Look at that
dragon, did you ever see such a creature!"
"Softly, softly, Matteo," spoke a superior-looking man in the dress of
a sub-prior, behind them. "What is wrong with the picture? It looks very
well, to me. We must have it finished, you understand, before the feast
of Saint Giles, in any case. You must remember, dear son, that these
works are not for the purpose of delighting the eye. The figure of Our
Lady would be more impressive if you were to add a gold border to the
mantle, would it not?"
Padraig retreated. He was still grinning over the expression on the
artist's face, when he took out a bit of crayon and at a safe distance
made a sketch of the pompous church-man on a convenient stone. Having
caught the likeness he took from his scrip a half-completed "Book of
Legends," and in the wide-open mouth of a squirming dragon which formed
the initial he drew the head and shoulders of the half-swallowed
Sub-Prior.
Just as he sat back to survey the design, Matteo strode down the path
and stopped with his hand on the gate.
"Did you see him?" the artist spluttered. "Did you hear him? Because he
is the secretary of the Archbishop and keeps the pay-roll he thinks he
can instruct me in my work! If I had to paint the things he describes I
would whitewash every one of my pictures and spend the rest of my days
in a scullery! There, at least, no fault would be found because the work
was too well done!
"That monster will be the death of me yet. I know that Le Gargouille
never looked like that. He was a great dragon, you know, who lived in
the Seine and ravaged the country until he was destroyed by Saint
Romaine. They do not infest our rivers any more--they have taken to the
church. My faith, if I knew where to find one I would lead that stupid
monk down there by the ear and show him what a dragon is like. I never
saw a dragon--it is not my business to paint dragons--but I know that
they ought to be slippery shining green like a frog, or a lizard--and
I cannot get the color."
"Is this anything like?" asked Padraig, and he held up the book.
Padraig's mind worked by leaps, Brother Basil used to say, and it had
made a jump while the artist was talking. The most that he had thought
of, when he made the sketch in his book, was that the face of the
Sub-Prior would be a good one to use some day for a certain kind of
character; and then it had occurred to him to fancy the dragon showing
his appreciation of the dignitary in a natural way. He had already done
the dragon with the last of the green that he and Brother Basil brought
from Ireland, before he came to France, and it was a clear transparent
brilliant color that looked like a new-born water-plant leaf in the
sun. He had watched lizards and frogs, in long dreamy afternoons by
the fishing-pools, too many times not to remember.
The painter's mobile dark face changed to half a dozen expressions in a
minute. He chuckled over the caricature; then he looked at the work more
closely; then he fluttered over the other leaves of the book.
"Where did you get the color for this?" he queried.
"I made it," said Padraig.
"Can you make it again?"