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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: smiled upon me as, touch by touch, I painted her? She has a soul,--the
soul with which I endowed her. She would blush if other eyes than mine
beheld her. Let her be seen?--where is the husband, the lover, so
debased as to lend his wife to dishonor? When you paint a picture for
the court you do not put your whole soul into it; you sell to
courtiers your tricked-out lay-figures. My painting is not a picture;
it is a sentiment, a passion! Born in my atelier, she must remain a
virgin there. She shall not leave it unclothed. Poesy and women give
themselves bare, like truth, to lovers only. Have we the model of
Raphael, the Angelica of Ariosto, the Beatrice of Dante? No, we see
but their semblance. Well, the work which I keep hidden behind bolts
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