s attired sumptuously in a robe heavy
with precious stones, that fell in straight folds, and he wore the royal
fillet on his snowy locks. But she was more sumptuous still, with only
the lilylike satin of her skin, her tall, slender figure, her round,
slender throat, her supple arms, divinely graceful. He reigned over, he
leaned, as a powerful and beloved master, on this subject, chosen from
among all others, so proud of having been chosen, so rejoiced to give to
her king the rejuvenating gift of her youth. All her pure and triumphant
beauty expressed the serenity of her submission, the tranquillity with
which she gave herself, before the assembled people, in the full light
of day. And he was very great and she was very fair, and there radiated
from both a starry radiance.

Up to the last moment Clotilde had left the faces of the two figures
vaguely outlined in a sort of mist. Pascal, standing behind her, jested
with her to hide his emotion, for he fancied he divined her intention.
And it was as he thought; she finished the faces with a few strokes of
the crayon--old King David was he, and she was Abishag, the Shunammite.
But they were enveloped in a dreamlike brightness, it was themselves
deified; the one with hair all white, the other with hair all blond,
covering them like an imperial mantle, with features lengthened by
ecstasy, exalted to the bliss of angels, with the glance and the smile
of immortal youth.

"Ah, dear!" he cried, "you have made us too beautiful; you have wandered
off again to dreamland--yes, as in the days, do you remember, when I
used to scold you for putting there all the fantastic flowers of the
Unknown?"

And he pointed to the walls, on which bloomed the fantastic _parterre_
of the old pastels, flowers not of the earth, grown in the soil of
paradise.

But she protested gayly.

"Too beautiful? We could not be too beautiful! I assure you it is thus
that I picture us to myself, thus that I see us; and thus it is that we
are. There! see if it is not the pure reality."

She took the old fifteenth century Bible which was beside her, and
showed him the simple wood engraving.

"You see it is exactly the same."

He smiled gently at this tranquil and extraordinary affirmation.

"Oh, you laugh, you look only at the details of the picture. It is
the spirit which it is necessary to penetrate. And look at the other
engravings, it is the same theme in all--Abraham and Hagar, Ruth and
Boaz. And you s