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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: frame of your picture, you think yourselves majestic artists like our
great forefathers. Ha, ha! you have not got there yet, my little men;
you will use up many a crayon and spoil many a canvas before you reach
that height. Undoubtedly a woman carries her head this way and her
petticoats that way; her eyes soften and droop with just that look of
resigned gentleness; the throbbing shadow of the eyelashes falls
exactly thus upon her cheek. That is it, and--that is NOT IT. What
lacks? A mere nothing; but that mere nothing is ALL. You have given
the shadow of life, but you have not given its fulness, its being, its
--I know not what--soul, perhaps, which floats vaporously about the
tabernacle of flesh; in short, that flower of life which Raphael and
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