"Don't stuff the child's head with that nonsense," he said,
and, perhaps, afterwards gave his friend a hint; for Madelon
heard no more about the saints, and was left to puzzle out
meanings and stories for the pictures for herself--and queer
enough ones she often made, very likely. On the other hand,
the American, who liked to talk to her in his own tongue, and
to make her chatter to him in return, would tell her many a
story of the old master painters, of Cimabue and the boy
Giotto, of Lionardo da Vinci, and half a dozen others; old,
old tales of the days when, as we sometimes fancy, looking
back through the mist of centuries, there were giants on the
earth, but all new and fresh to our little Madelon, and with a
touch or romance and poetry about them as told by the
enthusiastic artist, which readily seized her imagination;
indeed he himself, with his black velvet cap, and short pipe,
and old coat, became somehow ennobled and idealised in her
simple mind by his association through his art with the mighty
men he was teaching her to reverence.
Madelon spent much of her time in the painter's _atelier_, for
her father took it into his head this winter to try his hand
once more at his long-neglected art, and, armed with brushes
and palette, passed many of his leisure hours in his friend's
society.
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