But detraction did not lock the wheels of his triumphal chariot; it glided along with inconceivable rapidity through the pleasant avenues of popular admiration. And his art pleased too many connoisseurs of elegant taste and cultured sight not to have in it some higher and finer qualities than his enemies allowed to it. He had magical colouring, and as magical a touch; a woman's portrait, under his treatment, became gorgeous as a sunbird, delicate as an orchid, ethereal as a butterfly floating down a sunbeam. Then he was at times arrogant in his pretensions, fastidious in his selections of sitters; he was given to call himself an amateur, which at once disarmed his critics and increased his vogue; he was an aristocrat, and very good-looking, which did not diminish his popularity with any class of women; and what increased it still more was, that he refused many more sitters than he accepted. Not to have been painted in water colours, or drawn in pastel by Count Loris Loswa, was to any _élégante_ to be a step behindhand in fashion; to have a pearl missing from her crown of distinction.
'If anyone could paint dew on a cobweb it would be Loswa,' a great critic had said one day. 'Have you never seen dew on a cobweb? It is the most beautiful thing in the world, especially when a sunbeam trembles through it.'
His present hostess had a high opinion of his powers, mingled with a certain depreciation of them. 'Perhaps it is only a trick,' she admitted; 'but it is a divine trick--a trick of Hermes.'
He leaned now over the balustrade of the terrace of St. Pharamond, the warmth of the western sun shining on his fair curls and straight profile.
'A coxcomb can never be a genius,' murmured the Duc de Béthune, glancing towards him with sovereign contempt and dislike.
'You are always very _porté_ against poor Loris,' returned his hostess with a smile. 'Yes, he has genius in a way, the same sort of genius that Watteau had, and Coustou and Boucher; he should have been born under Louis Quinze; that is his only mistake.'
'He seems so to you, because all your life has been filled with grave thoughts and strong actions. All artists are apt to seem mere triflers to all soldiers. Who is that girl he is looking at?--what a handsome face!'