, Hermon heard him speak. He could not deny that
his voice was unusually pleasant in tone, yet it unmistakably issued
from the lips of a sufferer.

The brief questions with which he received the blind artist were kindly,
and as natural as though addressing an equal, and every remark made
in connection with Hermon's answers revealed a very quick and keen
intellect.

He had seen the Demeter, and praised the conception of the goddess
because it corresponded with her nature. The sanctity which, as it were,
pervaded the figure of the divine woman pleased him, because it made the
supplicants in the temple feel that they were in the presence of a being
who was elevated far above them in superhuman majesty.

"True," he added, "your Demeter is by no means a powerful helper in
time of need. She is a goddess such as Epicurus imagines the immortals.
Without interfering with human destiny, she stands above it in sublime
grandeur and typical dignity. You belong, if I see correctly, to the
Epicureans?"

"No," replied Hermon. "Like my lord and King, I, too, number myself
among the pupils of the wise Straton."

"Indeed?" asked Ptolemy in a drawling tone, at the same time casting
a glance of astonishment at the blind man's powerful figure and
well-formed, intellectual face. Then he went on eagerly: "I shall
scarcely be wrong in the inference that you, the creator of the
Fig-eater, had experienced a far-reaching mental change before your
unfortunate loss of sight?"

"I had to struggle hard," replied Hermon, "but I probably owe the
success of the Demeter to the circumstance that I found a model whose
mind and nature correspond with those of the goddess to a rare degree."

The monarch shook his fair head, and protested in a tone of positive
superior knowledge: "As to the model, however well selected it may be,
it was not well chosen for this work, far less for you. I have watched
your battle against beauty in behalf of truth, and rejoiced, though I
often saw you and your little band of young disciples shoot beyond the
mark. You brought something new, whose foundation seemed to me sound,
and on which further additions might be erected. When the excrescences
fell off, I thought, this Hermon, his shadow Soteles, and the others
who follow him will perhaps open new paths to the declining art which is
constantly going back to former days. Our time will become the point of
departure of a new art. But for that very reason, let me confess it