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of a woman set off by the dark oak paneling, Poussin exclaimed, “What a splendid Giorgione!”
    “No,” the old man replied. “What you see there is one of my first daubs!”
    “Saints preserve us!” Poussin cried naïvely. “I must be in the house of the god of painting!”
    The old man smiled like someone long familiar with such praise.
    “Maître Frenhofer!” said Porbus. “Couldn’t you manage to order a little of your good Rhenish wine for me?”
    “Two casks,” the old man replied. “One to pay for this morning’s pleasure of seeing your lovely sinner, and the other as a gift of friendship.”
    “Oh, if I weren’t still ailing,” Porbus continued, “and you would allow me a glimpse of your mistress, I think I could do a picture with life-size figures—something high, wide, and with real depth to it, too.”
    “Show you my work!” the old man exclaimed, suddenly upset. “No, no, it must still be brought to perfection. Yesterday, toward evening, I thought I was done. Her eyes seemed moist to me, her flesh was alive, the locks of her hair stirred...She breathed! Though I thought I’d learned how to render nature’s depth and solidity on a flat canvas, this morning, by daylight, I discovered my mistake. Ah! To achieve this glorious result, I’ve studied all the great colorists. Layer by layer I’ve analyzed and dissected the paintings of Titian, and like that master of light, I’ve laid in my figure in high colors with a soft, heavily loaded brush, for shadow is no more than an accident—remember that, my boy. Then I went back over my work and by using halftones and glazes, which I made less and less transparent, I managed to create the strongest shadows and even the deepest blacks—for most painters’ shadows are of a different nature from their lighter tones; they’re wood or bronze, whatever you like, anything except flesh in shadow. You feel that if the figure were to change position, the shadowed parts would never brighten, never become luminous...I’ve avoided this defect where so many of the most illustrious artists have failed: in my pictures the whites are still white within the opacity of even the deepest shadows! Unlike that pack of dabblers who suppose they’re drawing correctly because their work is so painstakingly sleek, I never surround my figures with the sort of dry outlines that emphasize every little anatomical detail—the human body isn’t bounded by lines! In this regard, sculptors come closer to the truth than we painters ever can. Nature consists of a series of shapes that melt into one another. Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as drawing! Don’t laugh, young man! Strange as it sounds, you’ll understand the truth of this some day. Line is the means by which man accounts for the effect of light on objects, but in nature there are no lines—in nature everything is continuous and whole. It’s by modeling that we draw, by which I mean that once we detach things from the medium in which they exist, only the distribution of light gives the body its appearance! Hence I never fix an outline; I spread a cloud of warm blond halftones over the contours—you can never put your finger right where the contours blend into the backgrounds. At close range, such labors look blurred and seem to lack precision, but at two paces everything congeals, solidifies, stands out; the body turns, the forms project, you feel the air circulating around them. Yet I’m still not satisfied—I have doubts. Perhaps it’s wrong to draw a single line: Wouldn’t it be better to deal with a figure from the center, concentrating first on the projecting parts which take the light most readily, then proceeding to the darker portions? Isn’t that the method of the sun, the divine painter of the universe? Oh nature, nature! Who has ever plumbed your secrets? There’s no escaping it; too much knowledge, like too much ignorance, leads to a negation. My work is ...my doubt!”
    The old man