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Read Ebook: Kloka Maja och andra berättelser by Hedberg Frans
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Ebook has 61 lines and 2240 words, and 2 pages
"Good heavens," said Aurelle, "a great artist cannot paint with a powder-puff; you must be able to feel that the fellow with the pencil was not a eunuch."
"Really," he went on, when the doctor had left in rather a bad temper, "he's as ridiculous as the others. I think his portrait is very vigorous, and not in the least a skit, whatever he may say."
"Just sit down there a minute, old man," said the painter. "I shall be jolly glad to work from an intelligent model for once. They all want to look like tailors' fashion-plates. Now, I can't change my style; I don't paint in beauty paste, I render what I see--it's like Diderot's old story about the amateur who asked a floral painter to portray a lion. 'With pleasure,' said the artist, 'but you may expect a lion that will be as like a rose as I can make him.'"
The conversation lasted a long time; it was friendly and technical. Aurelle praised Beltara's painting; Beltara expressed his joy at having found so penetrating and artistic a critic in the midst of so many Philistines.
Aurelle walked up to the painter, and, cocking his head on one side, looked at the drawing.
"It's charming," he said at last with some reluctance. "It's charming. There are some delightful touches--all that still life on the table, it might be a Chardin--and I like the background very much indeed."
"Well, old man, I'm glad you like it. Take it back with you when you go on leave and give it to your wife."
And Beltara, who was a decent fellow, adorned his friend's face with the Grecian nose and the small mouth which the gods had denied him.
DIPLOMACY
When Dr. O'Grady and Aurelle had succeeded, with some difficulty, in obtaining a room from old Madame de Vaucl?re, Colonel Parker went over to see them and was charmed with the ch?teau and the park.
France and England, he said, were the only two co
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