1. Perhaps it is worth nothing at all. How can I tell? he thought, with the heartsickness of a great timidity. Now that he had left it there, it seemed to him so hazardous, so vain, so foolish, to dream that he, a little lad with bare feet, who barely knew his letters, could do anything at which great painters, real artists, could ever deign to look. Yet he took heart as he went by the cathedral: the lordly form of Rubens seemed to rise from the fog and the darkness, and to loom in its magnificence before him, whilst the lips, with their kindly smile, seemed to him to murmur, Nay, have courage! It was not by a weak heart and by faint fear that I wrote my name for all time upon Antwerp.
Dog of Flanders & Other Stories
