Madelon, wandering about in the
gloom, gliding softly into every nook and corner, gazing at
tombs and decorated altars and pictures, wondered more and
more at this strange new world in which she found herself, and
which she had no one to interpret to her. It had a mysterious
attraction for her, as nothing had ever had before; and yet it
was almost a relief at last to escape again into the warm,
sunny out-of-door life, to walk home with the painter through
the bright narrow streets, listening to his gay careless talk,
and lingering, perhaps, at some stall, in the busy market-
place, to buy grapes and figs; and then to take a walk with
her father into the country, where roses nodded at her over
garden walls, and vines were yellowing beneath the autumn sky.
Her sensitive perception of beauty and grandeur was so much
greater than her power of grasping and comprehending them,
that her poor little mind became oppressed and bewildered by
the disproportion between the vividness with which she
received new impressions, and her ability for seizing their
meaning.
The pictures themselves, which, before long, she learnt to
delight in, and even in some sort to appreciate, were a
perpetual source of perplexity to her in the unknown subjects
they represented.
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