Remember that Raphael's genius wore out that divinest painter before half his life was lived.

Since you feel his influence powerfully enough to reproduce his miracles so well, it will assuredly consume you like a flame." "That might have been my peril once," answered Hilda.

"It is not so now." "Yes, fair maiden, you stand in that peril now!" insisted the kind old man; and he added, smiling, yet in a melancholy vein, and with a German grotesqueness of idea, "Some fine morning, I shall come to the Pinacotheca of the Vatican, with my palette and my brushes, and shall look for my little American artist that sees into the very heart of the grand pictures! And what shall I behold?
A heap of white ashes on the marble floor, just in front of the divine Raphael's picture of the Madonna da Foligno! Nothing more, upon my word! The fire, which the poor child feels so fervently, will have gone into her innermost, and burnt her quite up!" "It would be a happy martyrdom!" said Hilda, faintly smiling.

"But I am far from being worthy of it.

What troubles me much, among other troubles, is quite the reverse of what you think.