And there is another--a Correggio, in
the Hermitage, a St. Simon or St. Timothy, or some other old
fellow--whose eyes run tears of joy, and whose upturned face reflects
the light of the sun. Yet there was something in the face of the priest
before me that neither of the others had--a peculiar human quality,
which shone out of his eyes, as he stood bareheaded in the sunshine, the
little girl in his arms. If the child had been his daughter--his very
own and all he had, and if he had caught her safe from some danger that
threatened her life, it could not have expressed more clearly the
joyousness of gratitude or the bliss inspired by the sense of possessing
something so priceless that every other emotion was absorbed.
It was all over in a moment. He did not continue to beam irradiating
beatitudes, as the old Ribera and the older Correggio have done for
hundreds of years. He simply touched his hat to me, tucked the child's
hand into his own, and led her off to her mother.
I kept at my work.
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