nearing that
point of desperation where uncertainty is worse than the knowledge of
absolute defeat.

While I sought for some promising way in which to execute my scheme,
Raphael read the translations of the pagan writers which Dovizio had
lent him, and this plunge into a bath of the old literature, so new to
him, had a tremendous effect upon his susceptible mind. He regretted
deeply that Pico della Mirandola, who strove to harmonise Greek
mythology with the Christian religion, had been snatched away by death
before he could have had the opportunity to converse with him. He read
his writings with avidity and listened to what Dovizio remembered of his
arguments that the religion of the Greeks was as truly a revelation from
God as our own, and he could readily believe the assertion of certain of
the humanist's friends that at Pico's death-bed the Virgin and Venus
had met, and comforting his dying gaze with their presence, had together
borne away his soul to the regions of the blest.

Without being any less Christian, Raphael's soul expanded in the
sunshine of these influences, absorbing all that was joyous and
beautiful in pagan ideas. Chigi lent him his favourite manuscript, the
Myth of Psyche, translated from Apuleius, which he declared Raphael must
one day paint for him. But of all the gods of antiquity the one which
roused our young enthusiast to deepest admiration was Apollo, whose
avatar was the sun, but whose spiritual significance was infinitely
more, the light of the soul, the god of music, art, and poetry and all
that elevates the spirit of man.

"Listen Giovanni," he said to me one day, "I could pray to such a deity.
Think you that it would be sin to utter a prayer like this of Socrates:
'Beloved Pan, and all ye gods who haunt this place, give me beauty of
the inward soul, and may the outward and the inward man be at one'?"

Seeing sport in the idea I assured him that such adoration was
commendable and would doubtless meet with a response. I had my own idea
of what form that response should take. Chigi held revel that night to
celebrate a visit from the improvisatrice Imperia, who was on her way to
Rome. Raphael could not be induced to join the company, preferring to
spend the night devouring some books lately come from Venice. He had
striven to tell me of a mysterious experience. A stone bearing the image
of Apollo had fallen before him as he read, and he had accepted it as a
propitious omen. I laughed rud