Petrus and of mine should have thrown all the
teaching and the example of his parents so utterly to the wind. But what
you are aiming at with this statue, it seems to me is not hard to guess.
As the forbidden-fruit hangs too high for you, you degrade your art, and
make to yourself an image that resembles her according to your taste.
Simply and plainly it comes to this; as you can no longer see the Gaul's
wife in her own person, and yet cannot exist without the sweet presence
of the fair one, you make a portrait of clay to make love to, and you
will carry on idolatry before it, as once the Jews did before the golden
calf and the brazen serpent."

Polykarp submitted to his mother's angry blame in silence, but in
painful emotion. Dorothea had never before spoken to him thus, and to
hear such words from the very lips which were used to address him with
such heart-felt tenderness, gave him unspeakable pain. Hitherto she
had always been inclined to make excuses for his weaknesses and little
faults, nay, the zeal with which she had observed and pointed out his
merits and performances before strangers as well as before their own
family, had often seemed to him embarrassing. And now? She had indeed
reason to blame him, for Sirona was the wife of another, she had never
even noticed his admiration, and now, they all said, had committed a
crime for the sake of a stranger. It must seem both a mad and a sinful
thing in the eyes of men that he of all others should sacrifice the best
he had--his Art--and how little could Dorothea, who usually endeavored
to understand him, comprehend the overpowering impulse which had driven
him to his task.

He loved and honored his mother with his whole heart, and feeling that
she was doing herself an injustice by her false and low estimate of
his proceedings, he interrupted her eager discourse, raising his hands
imploringly to her.

"No, mother, no!" he exclaimed. "As truly as God is my helper, it is not
so. It is true that I have moulded this head, but not to keep it, and
commit the sin of worshipping it, but rather to free myself from the
image that stands before my mind's eye by day and by night, in the city
and in the desert, whose beauty distracts my mind when I think, and my
devotions when I try to pray. To whom is it given to read the soul of
man? And is not Sirona's form and face the loveliest image of the
Most High? So to represent it, that the whole charm that her presence
exercises over