The sacristan was quickly found, however, and lost no time in disclosing
the youthful Archangel, setting his divine foot on the head of his
fallen adversary. It was an image of that greatest of future events,
which we hope for so ardently, at least, while we are young,--but find
so very long in coming, the triumph of goodness over the evil principle.
"Where can Hilda be?" exclaimed Kenyon. "It is not her custom ever to
fail in an engagement; and the present one was made entirely on
her account. Except herself, you know, we were all agreed in our
recollection of the picture."
"But we were wrong, and Hilda right, as you perceive," said Miriam,
directing his attention to the point on which their dispute of the night
before had arisen. "It is not easy to detect her astray as regards any
picture on which those clear, soft eyes of hers have ever rested."
"And she has studied and admired few pictures so much as this," observed
the sculptor. "No wonder; for there is hardly another so beautiful in
the world. What an expression of heavenly severity in the Archangel's
face! There is a degree of pain, trouble, and disgust at being brought
in contact with sin, even for the purpose of quelling and punishing it;
and yet a celestial tranquillity pervades his whole being."
"I have never been able," said Miriam, "to admire this picture nearly so
much as Hilda does, in its moral and intellectual aspect. If it cost her
more trouble to be good, if her soul were less white and pure, she would
be a more competent critic of this picture, and would estimate it not
half so high. I see its defects today more clearly than ever before."
"What are some of them?" asked Kenyon.
"That Archangel, now," Miriam continued; "how fair he looks, with his
unruffled wings, with his unhacked sword, and clad in his bright
armor, and that exquisitely fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest
Paradisiacal mode! What a dainty air of the first celestial society!
With what half-scornful delicacy he sets his prettily sandalled foot
on the head of his prostrate foe! But, is it thus that virtue looks the
moment after its death struggle with evil? No, no; I could have told
Guido better. A full third of the Archangel's feathers should have been
torn from his wings; the rest all ruffled, till they looked like Satan's
own! His sword should be streaming with blood, and perhaps broken
halfway to the hilt; his armor crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory;
a bleeding gash on his brow, cutting right across the stern scowl of
battle! He should press his foot hard down upon the old serpent, as
if his very soul depended upon it, feeling him squirm mightily, and
doubting whether the fight were half over yet, and how the victory might
turn! And, with all this fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable
horror, there should still be something high, tender, and holy in
Michael's eyes, and around his mouth. But the battle never was such a
child's play as Guido's dapper Archangel seems to have found it."