Royal grace and nobility, sovereign peacefulness and power--every beauty shone out like natural florescence.

And there was perfect science, the most audacious foreshortening risked with the certainty of success--an everlasting triumph of technique over the difficulty which an arched surface presented.

And, in particular, there was wonderful simplicity of medium; matter was reduced almost to nothingness; a few colours were used broadly without any studied search for effect or brilliancy.

Yet that sufficed, the blood seethed freely, the muscles projected, the figures became animated and stood out of their frames with such energy and dash that it seemed as if a flame were flashing by aloft, endowing all those beings with superhuman and immortal life.

Life, aye, it was life, which burst forth and triumphed--mighty, swarming life, miraculous life, the creation of one sole hand possessed of the supreme gift--simplicity blended with power.
That a philosophical system, a record of the whole of human destiny, should have been found therein, with the creation of the world, of man, and of woman, the fall, the chastisement, then the redemption, and finally God's judgment on the last day--this was a matter on which Pierre was unable to dwell, at this first visit, in the wondering stupor into which the paintings threw him.