er of good gifts, a faithful, loving wife. Daphne's head
expresses this; but in modelling the body I lost sight of the whole
creation. While, for instance, in my fig-eater, every toe, every scrap
of the tattered garments, belongs to the street urchin whom I wished
to represent, in the goddess everything came by chance as the model
suggested it, and you know that I used several. Had the Demeter from
head to foot resembled Daphne, who has so much in common with our
goddess, the statue would have been harmonious, complete, and you would
perhaps have been the first to acknowledge it."

"By no means," Myrtilus eagerly interrupted. "What our statues of the
gods are we two know best: a wooden block, covered with gold and sheets
of ivory. But to tens of thousands the statue of the divinity must be
much more. When they raise their hearts, eyes, hands to it in prayer,
they must be possessed by the idea of the deity which animated us while
creating it, and with which we, as it were, permeated it. If it shows
them only a woman endowed with praiseworthy qualities--"

"Then," interrupted Hermon, "the worshipper should thank the sculptor;
for is it not more profitable to him to be encouraged by the statue to
emulate the human virtues whose successful embodiment it shows him than
to strive for the aid of the botchwork of human hands, which possesses
as much or as little power as the wood, gold, and ivory that compose it?
If the worshipper does not appeal to the statue, but to the goddess, I
fear it will be no less futile. So I shall consider it no blemish if you
see in my Demeter a mortal woman, and no goddess; nay, it reconciles me
in some degree to her weaknesses, to which I by no means close my eyes.
I, too--I confess it--often feel a great desire to give the power of
imagination greater play, and I know the divinities in whom I have lost
faith as well as any one; for I, too, was once a child, and few have
ever prayed to them more fervently, but with the increasing impulse
toward liberty came the perception: There are no gods, and whoever bows
to the power of the immortals makes himself a slave. So what I banished
from life I will also remove from art, and model nothing which might not
meet me to-day or to-morrow."

"Then, as an honest man, abstain altogether from making statues of the
gods," interrupted his friend.

"That was my intention long ago, as you are aware," the other answered.

"You could not commit a worse robbery up