is thoughts
reveled. The changing images stood out against the bright sky, vague and
fleeting in the hallucination of his eye, while the swallows, darting
through space in ceaseless flight, seemed trying to efface them as if
with strokes of a pen.

He found nothing. All these half-seen visions resembled things that
he had already done; all the women appeared to be the daughters or the
sisters of those that had already been born of his artistic fancy; and
the vague fear, that had haunted him for a year, that he had lost the
power to create, had made the round of all subjects and exhausted
his inspiration, outlined itself distinctly before this review of his
work--this lack of power to dream anew, to discover the unknown.

He arose quietly to look among his unfinished sketches, hoping to find
something that would inspire him with a new idea.

Still puffing at his cigarette, he proceeded to turn over the sketches,
drawings, and rough drafts that he kept in a large old closet; but, soon
becoming disgusted with this vain quest, and feeling depressed by the
lassitude of his spirits, he tossed away his cigarette, whistled a
popular street-song, bent down and picked up a heavy dumb-bell that lay
under a chair. Having raised with the other hand a curtain that draped a
mirror, which served him in judging the accuracy of a pose, in verifying
his perspectives and testing the truth, he placed himself in front of it
and began to swing the dumb-bell, meanwhile looking intently at himself.

He had been celebrated in the studios for his strength; then, in the gay
world, for his good looks. But now the weight of years was making him
heavy. Tall, with broad shoulders and full chest, he had acquired the
protruding stomach of an old wrestler, although he kept up his fencing
every day and rode his horse with assiduity. His head was still
remarkable and as handsome as ever, although in a style different from
that of his earlier days. His thick and short white hair set off
the black eyes beneath heavy gray eyebrows, while his luxuriant
moustache--the moustache of an old soldier--had remained quite dark, and
it gave to his countenance a rare characteristic of energy and pride.

Standing before the mirror, with heels together and body erect, he went
through the usual movements with the two iron balls, which he held out
at the end of his muscular arm, watching with a complacent expression
its evidence of quiet power.

But suddenly, in the g