es, often of superhuman grandeur.

Oh, if a higher power would at some future day permit him to model
with his strong hands this battle of the Amazons, this Phoebus Apollo,
radiant in beauty and the glow of victory, conquering the dragons of
darkness!

Arachne, too, returned to his mind, and also Demeter. But she did not
hover before him as the peaceful dispenser of blessings, the preserver
of peace, but as the maternal earth goddess, robbed of her daughter
Proserpina. How varied in meaning was this myth!--and he strove to
follow it in every direction.

Nothing more could come to the blind artist from Nature by the aid of
his physical vision. The realm of reality was closed to him; but he had
found the key to that of the ideal, and what he found in it proved to be
no less true than the objects the other had offered.

How rich in forms was the new world which forced itself unbidden on his
imagination! He who, a short time before, had believed whatever could
not be touched by the hands was useless for his art, now had the choice
among a hundred subjects, full of glowing life, which were attainable by
no organ of the senses. He need fear to undertake none, if only it was
worthy of representation; for he was sure of his ability, and difficulty
did not alarm him, but promised to lend creating for the first time its
true charm.

And, besides, without the interest of animated conversation, without
festal scenes where, with garlanded head and intoxicating pleasure
soaring upward from the dust of earth, existence had seemed to him
shallow and not worth the trouble it imposed upon mortals, solitude now
offered him hours as happy as he had ever experienced while revelling
with gay companions.

At first many things had disturbed them, especially the dissatisfied,
almost gloomy disposition of his Egyptian slave, who, born in the city
and accustomed to its life, found it unbearable to stay in the desert
with the strange blind master, who lived like a porter, and ordered him
to prepare his wretched fare with the hands skilled in the use of the
pen.

But this living disturber of the peace was not to annoy the recluse
long. Scarcely a fortnight after Bias's departure, the slave Patran, who
had cost so extravagant a sum, vanished one morning with the sculptor's
money and silver cup.

This rascally trick of a servant whom he had treated with almost
brotherly kindness wounded Hermon, but he soon regarded the morose
fellow's disa