And the most extraordinary delight appeared upon the young man's fair, rapturous face, whilst his fingers began to quiver.

"But it's a Botticelli, it's a Botticelli! There can be no doubt about it," he exclaimed.

"Just look at the hands, and look at the folds of the drapery! And the colour of the hair, and the technique, the flow of the whole composition.

A Botticelli, ah! _mon Dieu_, a Botticelli." He became quite faint, overflowing with increasing admiration as he penetrated more and more deeply into the subject, at once so simple and so poignant.

Was it not acutely modern?
The artist had foreseen our pain-fraught century, our anxiety in presence of the invisible, our distress at being unable to cross the portal of mystery which was for ever closed.