To me,
Denys seemed to have been a real resident at Auxerre. On days of a
certain atmosphere, when the trace of the Middle Age comes out, like
old marks in the stones in rainy weather, I seemed actually to have
seen the tortured figure there--to have met Denys l'Auxerrois in the
streets.
III. SEBASTIAN VAN STORCK
[81] It was a winter-scene, by Adrian van de Velde, or by Isaac van
Ostade. All the delicate poetry together with all the delicate
comfort of the frosty season was in the leafless branches turned to
silver, the furred dresses of the skaters, the warmth of the red-
brick house-fronts under the gauze of white fog, the gleams of pale
sunlight on the cuirasses of the mounted soldiers as they receded
into the distance. Sebastian van Storck, confessedly the most
graceful performer in all that skating multitude, moving in endless
maze over the vast surface of the frozen water-meadow, liked best
this season of the year for its expression of a perfect impassivity,
or at least of a perfect repose. The earth was, or seemed to be, at
rest, with a breathlessness of slumber which suited the young man's
peculiar temper. The heavy summer, as it dried up the meadows now
lying dead below the ice, set free a crowded and competing world of
life, which, while it gleamed very pleasantly russet and [82] yellow
for the painter Albert Cuyp, seemed wellnigh to suffocate Sebastian
van Storck.
Yet with all his appreciation of the national winter, Sebastian was
not altogether a Hollander.
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