A time full of enigmas! and among the many enigmas which lived in it, was one of a sad, silent monk, of whom his cloister-brethren asserted that he once had led a very dissolute life, but now was the most absorbed _dèvoté_.
And whilst King Francis, at variance with himself and the world, tried to maintain, even to the end, the appearance of ostentatious levity, and to win fresh renown as a patron of art, and to console himself for his lost self-respect with the flatteries of the Duchess d'Etampes, this monk devoted every single hour which remained to him, after the barest satisfaction of his physical needs, and the fulfilment of his religious duties, to one and the same work,--a sweet girl's head,--which he, with his slender, effeminate, courtier's hand, formed out of wax after a death mask, and ever again re-formed, and could never finish to his own satisfaction. Discouraged, disappointed, he destroyed each day the work of the preceding until finally, in the very last year of his life he became more tranquil, and then under his never-weary hands arose an exquisite maiden's head with a sweet, thoughtful expression of face,--the little head bent forward as if listening to a great joy, yet weighed down by the presentiment of a terrible pain!
And he worked at the head on his knees, like Fra Angelico at his ecstatic pictures of saints, and he coloured it most beautifully--but still, not as if it were the head of a living maiden, but as of one who had died in the freshness of youth. When he succeeded, he smiled and closed his eyes for ever.
After long wanderings, the bust has found a resting-place in the museum at Lille. Full of a dreamy pathos, it stands in its glass case--an atonement for Love betrayed--in memory of the bitterest repentance.
As the embodiment of an old legend, it interests us and seems to say: "A tear for Blanche of Montalme; for Henri de Lancy--a prayer!"
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blanche:, by Ossip Schubin